The Milton Film Festival will be taking a break for the foreseeable future.
Announced on Monday, April 8th, the Milton Film Festival will temporarily suspend operations starting November 2024. This means they will cancel all programming, including the January 2025 Festival. This temporary hiatus is due to a serious financial crisis that has left the organisation without the financial resources and capacity to continue in a fiscally responsible manner.
The organisers still plan to hold some stand-alone film screenings at Country Heritage Park in the summer and fall, thanks to a generous grant from the Town of Milton Community Fund, and hope to be able to bring back the main January festival in the upcoming years.
“Since it first began in 2014, the Milton Film Festival has operated ‘in the black’, covering all expenses through ticket sales and the generous support of their sponsorship and granting partners, as well as accumulating a healthy reserve fund,” reads the release. “However, in the two years since the return to in-person theatrical screenings following the COVID-19 pandemic, attendance has dropped to about a third of previous levels. This is a situation that is being experienced industry-wide, and many other film festivals, large and small, have been struggling to rebuild audiences and participation.”
With attendance and ticket revenue down, the Festival has also experienced “a significant increase in costs” at the festival’s venue, the FirstOntario Arts Centre Milton. This includes ticketing fees that have more than doubled since 2020, and at the January 2024 Festival accounted for nearly a third of the price of every ticket sold. They add that, in addition to venue costs, film licensing fees and other festival-related expenses have also gone up substantially.
“The resulting deficit has left the Milton Film Festival with no financial reserves and made it impossible to continue in 2025 without putting the organisation at significant financial risk.”
The Milton Film Festivl is hoping for a return to the movies from audiences, and are welcoming pledges of financial support from business and community leaders who support the arts in Milton. These pledges will allow the Festival to plan for the future and continue its legacy as one of the Town’s most significant annual cultural events.
To get a hold of the Milton Film Festival to provide support, contact them at 905-299-5551 or info@miltonfilmfest.com.
The Milton Film Festival is actively recruiting new members to help lead the organisation into the future, to support its efforts to be resilient, and to promote the Festival’s reputation as a leading cultural event in Milton.
“The Milton Film Festival organisers would like to thank the many, many people who have supported the Milton Film Festival over the past decade, including our generous sponsors, our current and former board members and volunteers, our talented filmmakers, and most especially our loyal audience members who have stuck with us year after year, from our first festival through the pandemic and beyond. We hope to see you at the movies again soon.”
To learn more about the Milton Film Festival, click here.
If you have a news tip or story idea, you can now send us a heads up via email at News1013@LocalRadio.ca. If you’d like to get ahold of me personally, shoot me a message at Cameron.Wilkinson@LocalRadio.ca. We’re in the business of content creation, so no idea is a bad idea.