Canal+ Chief Says Group Will Stop Working With Petition Signers

Canal+ chief executive Maxime Saada said Sunday that the company will no longer work with hundreds of film professionals who signed a petition criticizing owner Vincent Bolloré. The announcement was made at the Cannes Film Festival, where the Canal+ logo had already been booed at some screenings this year, including the opening film The Electric Kiss.

The open letter, published earlier this week, was signed by more than 600 people. Signatories included actor-director Juliette Binoche, director and photographer Raymond Depardon, French-Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, and director Arthur Harari. Harari co-wrote the Oscar-winning film Anatomy of a Fall and is premiering The Unknown in the main competition at Cannes.

The petition warned that leaving French cinema in the hands of a far-right owner risked standardization of films and a fascist takeover of the collective imagination.

Saada called the petition an injustice toward Canal+ teams committed to defending the independence of the group and the full diversity of its choices. The petition also raised concerns about Canal+ taking a stake in UGC, the third-largest network of French cinemas, with plans to fully own it in 2028.

Signatories said this would give Bolloré control over financing, distribution, and release of films.

Bolloré owns Canal+, StudioCanal, the channel CNews, the radio station Europe 1, and the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche. StudioCanal produced recent films including the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black and Paddington in Peru. Last month more than 100 writers quit the publishing house Grasset in protest at Bolloré’s control of its parent company Hachette.

In a senate hearing in 2022, Bolloré denied political interventionism and said his interest in media was purely financial. After the authors’ revolt, Bolloré wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche that those who quit were a tiny caste who think themselves above everyone else and described himself as a Christian democrat.