“I experienced this petition as an injustice towards the Canal teams who are committed to defending the independence of Canal+, and in all the diversity of its choices. And as a result, I will no longer work, I no longer want Canal to work with the people who signed this petition.” The chairman of the Canal+ board of directors, Maxime Saada, announced on Sunday May 17, 2026 that he no longer wanted his group, the leading financier of cinema in France, to continue working with the professionals who signed a petition against its reference shareholder Vincent Bolloré.
Published Monday at the beginning of 79e Cannes festival, signed in particular by Juliette Binoche and Swann Arlaud, she denounces “the growing influence of the extreme right” in cinema through the intermediary of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who is already the subject of a revolt in publishing led by some 200 authors published by Grasset.
“By leaving French cinema in the hands of a far-right boss, we risk not only a standardization of films, but a fascist takeover of the collective imagination.”wrote the signatories who include producers, cinema operators, filmmakers, technicians and actors.
170 million euros per year in French cinema
“Well, I don’t want to work with people who call me a crypto-fascist, I’m sorry, the limit, for me it’s there.”declared Maxime Saada during the “Producers’ Brunch” organisé par Canal+ à Cannes.
The forum was particularly alarmed by the desire of the Canal+ group to seize the entire capital of UGC, the network of cinemas of which it acquired 34% in September. This forum has so far met with limited resonance among the professionals questioned this week by theAFPmany of them struggling to detect a change in ideological line within Canal+ while worrying about an overall drop in funding. Under the terms of an agreement sealed in January 2025, the Canal+ group has undertaken to allocate up to 170 million euros per year to French cinema by 2027, compared to 220 million previously.
