Cinema: backlash against Bolloré

On May 17, during the cinema producers’ brunch, the director of the Canal+ group, owned by the far-right billionaire Bolloré, promised a great ideological purge. Maxime Saada, boss of the group, announced that he was no longer going to finance the signatories of an anti-Bolloré petition. Canal+ controls French cinema by showering it with money, it is the primary financial support for our country’s film industry. Without him, most productions can no longer make films. With this threat, the risk that this already courageous cultural industry will self-censor is very high.

But in recent days, we are witnessing an unexpected anti-Bolloré backlash. Following these threats, many members of the “great cinema family” are waking up. The billionaire threatens to silence artists? The forum explodes: the text has gone from 600 signatories to more than 3,800, including leading actors and actresses and big foreign names, giving visibility to this attempt at censorship well beyond our borders. A real Streisand effect.

Another amusing figure, spotted by the “Zapper Bolloré” collective: 48 of the 56 French films present this year at Cannes have a signatory of the platform. Of the thousand films produced over the last 5 years in France, there is at least one signatory in the credits of 600 films. So, if the billionaire carried out his project, there might no longer be many people in the cinemas. The threats therefore risk falling through, because Bolloré would be shooting itself in the foot.

To top it off, Canal+ is now being sued for “discrimination” against the signatories of the anti-Bolloré forum. Indeed, the group has no right to censor creators on the basis of political ideas. The channel is not a generous patron who would give money without compensation: Canal+ benefits from privileges, in particular the authorization to broadcast certain films exclusively on television, in exchange for its financing. This does not give him the right to choose who has the right to speak.

In this standoff, certain cinema figures stand out for their cowardice. For example, the director Mathieu Kassovitz, who goes from “La Haine” to shame, defending Canal+ which, according to him, “does its job very well”. Kassovitz made a film about working-class neighborhoods in the 1990s, he defended the French secret services with the series “Le bureau des Légendes” in the 2010s, which heroizes the barbouzes and the assassins of the Republic French, before flying to the aid of Bolloré in the 2020s.

Fabien Onteniente, creator of the Camping film series, boasts on RMC: “I wouldn’t have signed this column.” What courage. He adds with contempt: “Of the 600 signatories, I don’t know that many… I don’t know where they found them.” Alain Chabat, figure of the Canal spirit of the 1990s, plays the card of neutrality, and says he has the impression of being “stuck between Pigasse and Bolloré”. Pigasse being a businessman claiming to be on the left. In short, the director of Asterix Mission Cleopatra draws the “neither, nor” argument. Finally, according to the JDD and the Midi Libre, sources to be taken with a grain of salt, the comedian and director Jean-Pascal Zadi would have “made a call to apologize for having signed the petition”, explaining that he had “read it wrong”…

One thing is certain, this platform and the pressure from the far right which followed have the merit of finally putting a little political debate into the polished depths of French cinema.