In 2013, the Troma Team returned to the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du film for the first time in a decade. Their mission was twofold. First, sell their latest production at the time, Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1. Two, give those media conglomerates what for and prove to them that independent film still has a place in the world of film.
Armed with cameras, picket signs made with scavenged wood, masks and costumes from the rest of the Troma-verse, and packets of Alka-Seltzer, Troma’s street team takes to the La Croisette Promenade to raise this awareness among other festival attendees. This is the Occupy Cannes movement.
Made up of the Kaufman clan, Troma employees, and a small band of volunteers from around the globe, they stage rallies, marches, and outrageous, impossible-to-ignore stunts (see the mention of Alka-Seltzer above). Once met as heroes of the indie spirit, they are now met with indifference, annoyance, and at times, downright hostility. Victims of their self-promotion, now the police are there to question them, shut them down, and threaten to arrest them at every turn.
You know what would make this all worth it? Sales. Sales of the movie to some, if not a few, territories before the Market is over. Then all this opposition, all of this sleeping on the floors, bad eating habits, physical assaults, and crackdown by the local authorities would have been worth it.
The doc features footage filmed then by Lloyd Kaufman’s daughter, Charlotte (now director of the 2025 Sundance documentary selection, The Alabama Solution), and anyone else who had a camera with them at the time. Occupy Cannes comes at a time, then and now, when Uncle Lloyd had this question for the festival and the market. What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.
Fed up with the complete overtake by the major studio system, it is both heartening and funny to see this ragtag group of movie misfits march their way through Cannes, their makeshift signs held high over their heads. Laughs come when watching the guerrilla-style marketing and stunts during that week, which either gathered a crowd or fell flat.
Emotions run high, then low, and high again. A few of those who made the trip in 2013 were given the chance to reflect on their decision to go there, to do what they did in the name of Troma. The doc captures moments when the team was shaken up when one of them was physically assaulted while having a night off. When you are staying in one of the nicest locations on the planet and dinner comprises a bag of chips, you are sleeping on the floor all week, and they are pretty sure they told the team about the rain, tempers began to run a little hot. But as this doc is about championing the indie spirit, they will rise above if all and soldier on, in the name of independent cinema. Huzzah!
And at the end, there is a ‘where are they now?’ montage of most of the gang from that year. Maybe to Kaufman’s chagrin, a few of them landed jobs within the smaller studio system. Many of them still work throughout the fringe industries as well. Yes, some of that archival footage gathered by director Lily Hayes Kaufman, herself an alumnus of the Troma-verse, as were all the Kaufman children, highlights the production company’s greatest export, James Gunn. But you were expecting that already.
Only a couple of years after the populist movement, Occupy Wall Street, the folks at Troma took it upon themselves to do the same and occupy one of the biggest film events of the year, Cannes, specifically the Marche du film. Occupy Cannes is not only a time capsule of those moments but a reminder that there were and still are keepers of that indie spirit.
Troma does things their own way, always have, always will.