On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, about 600 French film professionals, including famous actors Juliette Binoche, Adèle Haenel, Swan Arlaud and Damien Bonnard, signed an open letter opposing right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s plans to take full control of UGC, France’s third-largest cinema chain.
The letter was published in a left-leaning French newspaper releaseHe warned that a takeover by Bolloré, whose media empire has been accused of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas, would amount to a “fascist takeover of the collective imagination.”
Through his media company Vivendi, Bolloré already owns Canal+, France’s largest pay-TV company, and its subsidiary Studiocanal, Europe’s leading film production company. Through Canal+, Bolloré has a 34% stake in the user-generated cinema chain, but has announced plans to take full control of UGC by 2028. Bolloré’s media empire includes CNews, a popular French news channel that has been attacked by figures on the left for allegedly providing a platform for far-right voices.
The film industry’s backlash against Bolloré follows a protest by more than 100 writers, who last month left the historic French publishing house Grassé, another of Bolloré’s assets, and accused him of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas. At a French Senate hearing in 2022, Bolloré denied any political or ideological motives in his media acquisitions, saying that his interest in the film and television business was purely financial and related to expanding French cultural soft power.
In the letter, French film professionals, including producers, distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers, technicians and crew, said they were all, to varying degrees, now dependent on Vincent Bolloré’s money for our projects as well as our salaries, but felt compelled to “break the silence maliciously imposed on our industry”. The movies have been discreet so far, but we’re under no illusions: it won’t last.
The group warns that the user-generated content deal will give Bolloré “an unprecedented concentration” of his financial power within the French film industry, giving him “complete freedom to act when the time comes. We will not be able to say we did not know.”
Noting that France’s far-right National Rally party has called for the dismantling of key institutes in the French film industry, including the National Film Council (CNC) and France’s public broadcasting system, the letter asks: “Do we want to risk a future where only propaganda films that serve a certain ideology are financed?”
