{"id":454593,"date":"2026-05-18T08:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T08:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/454593\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T08:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T08:48:13","slug":"frances-film-giant-canal-to-blacklist-hundreds-over-petition-against-right-wing-owner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/454593\/","title":{"rendered":"France\u2019s film giant Canal+ to blacklist hundreds over petition against right-wing owner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of France<\/a>‘s biggest film producer, Canal+, said Sunday that the group would no longer work with 600 industry<\/a> professionals who signed a petition against right-wing billionaire owner Vincent Bollor\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The announcement, made at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, is likely to send shockwaves through the European industry at the annual gathering of the world’s movie elite on the French Riviera.<\/p>\n

Read moreFrench media tycoon Vincent Bollor\u00e9 casts shadow over Cannes opening<\/a><\/p>\n

“I experienced that petition as an injustice toward the Canal+ teams, who are committed to defending the independence of Canal+ and the full diversity of its choices,” chief executive Maxime Saada said on Sunday in Cannes.<\/p>\n

“I will no longer work with and I no longer want Canal to work with the people who signed that petition,” he added.<\/p>\n

The petition called people to mobilise against “the growing grip of the far right<\/a>” on the film industry under the influence of Bollor\u00e9 and the Canal+ group.<\/p>\n

Signatories included French superstar Juliette Binoche as well as director Arthur Harari, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning “Anatomy of a Fall” in 2023 and is premiering his film “The Unknown” in the main competition in Cannes.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel Marre, whose film “A Man Of His Time” about France’s collaboration under Nazi rule, is also in the Cannes competition and also signed the petition.<\/p>\n

The tumult mirrors similar upheaval in the media<\/a> and publishing worlds where Bollor\u00e9, a conservative close to far-right politicians, is reshaping businesses he controls from television<\/a> channels to publishing houses.<\/p>\n

In a sign of Bollor\u00e9’s divisive reputation, the Canal+ logo was booed in Cannes at some screenings this year, including for the opening film “The Electric Kiss”.<\/p>\n

Last month more than 100 authors at the Bollor\u00e9-owned Grasset publishing group, home to some of the biggest names in French literature, said they would leave after the ousting of its long-time CEO.<\/p>\n

Bollore’s aggressive expansion into the French media in recent years has been cheered by conservatives as rebalancing what they see as long-standing left-wing bias.<\/p>\n

The billionaire, a devout Catholic who made his money in logistics, has been frequently compared by commentators to Australian-born US media mogul Rupert Murdoch<\/a>, with the Bollore-owned CNews news channel bearing similarities to US network Fox News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of France‘s biggest film producer, Canal+, said Sunday that the group would no longer work with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[10532,93,1814,197306,61,60,282,197305],"class_list":["post-454593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-france","tag-french-cinema","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv","tag-vincent-bollore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}