Fantasia International Film Festival 2025 – For 50 years, Troma Films has been a staple of American independent filmmaking, producing B movie classics like The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High, and Mother’s Day. And for 50 years, the company’s president and co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, has been outspoken about media consolidation and big studio films. Troma embodies a punk rock attitude that’s earned the company a loyal fanbase over the years. Occupy Cannes!, written and directed by LLoyd Kaufman’s daughter, Lily Hayes Kaufman, is about the company’s return to the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 and the hijinks, pushback, and perseverance that ensued.
More than a decade ago, Troma was truly at a crossroads, fighting to survive and struggling to secure distribution. Mind you, this is before streaming really took off and before Troma launched its own streaming channel. Lloyd Kaufman and a team of scrappy volunteers and actors headed to France for the prestigious film festival, all to promote Return to Nuke ‘Em High. With little to no money, and in classic Troma fashion, the team relied on guerilla marketing to promote the movie.
Just like the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which launched in NYC in 2011 to protest economic inequality, the Troma team essentially occupied public space. They marched. They wore masks. They conducted a zombie crawl. Lloyd Kaufman, as he always does, bemoaned the big studio system. They also faced a lot of resistance by police, which essentially shut down several of their marketing tactics and protests. Yet, they still found ways to promote Return to Nuke ‘Em High, while pointing out how indie movies essentially get the shaft by the bigger festivals and studio system.
Against their small flyers and street theater, the Troma team was flanked by massive posters all along the streets for major movies of the time, including a Transformers sequel and Baz Luhrmann’s take on The Great Gatsby. These posters cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The documentary is definitely a critique of the big studio system. But it’s also a testament to Troma’s resilience over the years. Even after the police shut them down again and again, they showed up on the streets the next day, or sometimes, just hours later. Because of that, their screening sold out. They built buzz but still faced difficulty securing distribution.
There’s also an interesting moment when one of Lloyd Kaufman’s other children, Charlotte Kaufman, openly ponders if her dad is sometimes his own worst enemy. For instance, there’s a clip of him at a convention. He’s interviewed by The New York Times and uses that to slam the paper for never really covering Troma, even if it’s a NY-based company. He critiques the paper instead of promoting his company’s latest film. The reporter immediately shuts down the interview and moves on. Meanwhile, Lloyd Kaufman’s longtime wife, Pat Swinney Kaufman, also questions if the team’s constant, in-your-face tactics may do more harm than good.
That said, this movie is mostly a love letter to Troma and its endurance. It’s not necessarily a documentary about the history of the company, but only their specific and uneasy relationship to Cannes. It also underscores just how tough it was for an indie film company at the time, even one as well-known as Troma, to find distribution.
The film does flash forward to the present day to show what everyone is up to. Many of the workers and volunteers have produced pretty big projects for the likes of HBO and Shudder’s “The Last Drive-in,” while still maintaining a connection to Troma. I personally would have liked more about how streaming impacted the company. Did it turn around the constant financial hardship? That’s a major element that’s missing and an important part of Troma’s story and the story of indie film more generally.
Occupy Cannes! illustrates the punk rock, DIY attitude that’s always been a part of Troma Films. Yet, it also documents how tough it is for a long-running independent company like Troma to survive. For genre fans, especially indie film lovers, this doc is a must-see.
