Canal+ media group threatens to blacklist 600 film professionals for criticizing its shareholder

As the Cannes Film Festival ticked on, one name was heard over and over on the red carpet and in movie theatres: Canal+.

The head of Canal+, 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.

Filmmaker Arthur Harari, whose movie “The Unknown” is vying for the Palme d’Or at the festival, was one of the 600 film figures who signed an op-ed on Liberation newspaper entitled “Zap Bollore”.

“The fact that this group is within a larger group owned by Vincent Bollore, who is increasingly controlling a rather staggering number of press and television outlets, and whose orientation is very, very clearly far right, this thing had to be called out, because when something isn't called out, it rots,” Harari told journalists.

    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, radio Europe 1, 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.

Among the 600 film personalities who signed open letter published in the newspaper Liberation is French actress and director Juliette Binoche. The letter opposed the acquisition by Canal+ 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 (May 17), 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 a lot 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 are exercising their freedom of expression, they have a right to have their own opinions and a right to be afraid. But all of this is a bit extreme because it's disrupting 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.

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".

-Michaela Cabrera, Fedja Grulovic, Oliver Barth/Reuters