Almost every day at this edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the audience boos loudly when the Canal+ logo appears before the film. “It’s the right-wing media,” one French journalist explained.
Artists have spoken out, including Spanish directing legend Pedro Almodovar, who, during Wednesday’s press conference for his latest film, Bitter Christmas“I don’t want to judge anyone, but I think artists should speak out about the situation they live in in contemporary society. It’s a moral obligation,” he stated, when asked about the ongoing controversy.
He concluded his speech by saying: “Europe must never submit to Trump!”, to which the international press room erupted in applause.
He was wearing a pin that said “Free Palestine.”
Here’s the background: On May 12, the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, 600 members of the film industry attended, including Juliette Binoche, Adele Haenel, and Swan Arlaud (aka “The Sexy Lawyer” from A.I.The nature of the fall) signed a letter criticizing right-wing billionaire and media mogul Vincent Bolloré, who owns France’s No. 1 pay-TV channel Canal+ and its production arm Studiocanal, and is in the midst of acquiring UGC, France’s third-largest cinema chain. It’s a situation similar to the media consolidation that occurred in the United States with David Ellison’s Paramount-Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Television. Discovery.
The letter was published in the newspaper releaseHe warned that Bolloré’s control over the entire film production line could lead to “fascism taking over the collective imagination.” (Just a month ago, in the world of book publishing, more than 100 authors left the Grasset publishing house, owned by Palloré, after its publisher Olivier Nora was fired, declaring that they would no longer be “hostages in an ideological war.”)
Then the situation in the world of cinema worsened on Sunday, when Canal+ CEO Maxine Saadeh announced that the network would essentially blacklist any artist who signed the letter and refuse to work with them. “I don’t want to work with people who call us crypto-fascists,” Saadeh said at a producers’ lunch in Cannes.
Almodóvar was prompted to speak out when a Spanish journalist asked him how he felt about “there being a crisis in Hollywood and Canal+ threatening creative people.”
The director responded: “Silence is an expression of fear. It is an indicator that things are going very badly. It is a dangerous sign that democracy is collapsing. Creative people must speak out.” He continued: “The worst thing that can happen to us is to remain silent or be censored. We have a moral obligation to speak out about all these things. We need to turn against Netanyahu. In Europe, we have laws, and there are certain limits. We have to act as a shield against this madness.”
