PARIS, May 18 (Reuters) – A top media group in France has threatened to blacklist 600 cinema professionals after they criticised its top shareholder, conservative tycoon Vincent Bollore, and his growing footprint across France’s cultural sector.
The spat underlines the strength of political polarisation in France ahead of next year’s presidential election, while also tapping into thorny questions over how the country’s film industry is funded at a time of growing media consolidation and tight public finances.
Bollore is a reclusive French billionaire who controls a media empire that includes Canal+ as well as news channel CNews, the Journal du Dimanche newspaper and publishing group Louis Hachette. His growing reach across France’s media landscape has unsettled critics, who accuse him of seeking to install a far-right government by fanning nationalist narratives.
Bollore has said he is the scapegoat of France’s elite, sidelined for refusing to play by their rules. He has denied any ideological project, saying some of his media titles serve untapped consumer demand for conservative views not found in France’s mainstream offerings.
On May 11, a group of 600 film figures, including French actress and director Juliette Binoche, published an open letter in the newspaper Liberation in opposition to Canal+ SA’s acquisition of about a third of UGC, a French movie chain.
In the letter, they argued the UGC stake would allow Bollore “to control the entire film production chain, from financing to distribution on both the small and big screens.”
“Behind his businessman’s facade, the billionaire makes no secret of the fact that he is pursuing a ‘civilizational project’, a reactionary, far-right agenda, through his TV networks like CNews and his publishing houses,” they said.
Speaking at an event at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, Maxime Saada, the CEO of Canal+ Group and a top Bollore lieutenant, said the UGC deal showed Canal+’s attachment to cinema, and that the letter had crossed a red line.
“I do not want Canal+ to work anymore with the people who signed that petition,” Saada said.
Canal+ representatives declined to comment, while the collective behind the letter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The comments by Saada – who leads a company that is a cornerstone of the French film industry, investing 200 million euros annually – reverberated throughout the sector just as many of its leading lights were assembled in Cannes.
Alain Attal, a producer who has worked with Canal+ including on “Garance”, a film currently in competition in Cannes, called Saada’s remarks “a knee-jerk reaction” that was “unjustified.”
“The petitioners have freedom of expression, have the right to speak out, to have their own ideas, and to be afraid. But all of this is a bit extreme because it upsets a balance that is already very fragile,” he told Reuters.
Canal+ is a sprawling French media company which provides subscription television, distribution for other channels and invests in film production in 52 countries including France.
The Liberation letter is the latest in a series of moves by some of France’s cultural elite against Bollore’s growing footprint in their sector.
Last month, more than 100 authors quit the publishing house Grasset, which is part of Louis Hachette, after the imprint’s chief executive left without explanation.
French media reported at the time that his departure was related to a dispute about whether and when to publish a book by French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal about his detention in Algeria.
The authors said in an open letter that they refused to be “hostages in an ideological war that seeks to impose authoritarianism everywhere in culture and the media”.
(Reporting by Michaela Cabrera; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Hugh Lawson)
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