The head of Canal+, France's largest film production and financing group, has threatened to stop working with more than 600 cinema professionals who signed an open letter criticising the growing influence of the group's billionaire owner, Vincent Bolloré. The announcement, made on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, has sent shockwaves through the European film industry gathered for the world's most prominent annual cinema event.

Canal+ chief executive Maxime Saada said he had taken the petition personally. "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," he said at a producers' event on the sidelines of the festival. "I will no longer work with, and I no longer want Canal to work with, the people who signed that petition." The statement amounts to an industry blacklist at a moment when Canal+ — which also controls StudioCanal, Europe's leading film and television production and distribution group — sits at the heart of French cinema financing.

The petition, titled "Zappons Bolloré" ("Let's switch off Bolloré"), was published to coincide with the festival's opening and signed by prominent figures including actor-director Juliette Binoche, photographer and director Raymond Depardon, French-Iranian film-maker Sepideh Farsi, and Arthur Harari, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and is premiering a new film in Cannes's main competition. Signatories warned that "leaving French cinema in the hands of a far-right owner" risked "not only the standardisation of films, but a fascist takeover of the collective imagination." Their specific concern was Canal+'s move to acquire a stake in UGC, France's third-largest cinema chain, with a view to full ownership by 2028 — a deal they said would give Bolloré control over the entire film supply chain, from financing to theatrical release.

Bolloré, a devout Catholic who built his fortune in logistics, has assembled a major French media empire including the television news channel CNews, radio station Europe 1, and the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. Critics frequently compare him to Rupert Murdoch, and his expansion has been welcomed by conservatives who argue it corrects a longstanding left-wing bias in French media. At a Senate hearing in 2022, Bolloré denied any ideological intervention in his media holdings, describing his acquisitions as financially motivated and aimed at promoting French soft power. After a separate revolt last month — in which more than 100 authors quit the Bolloré-owned Grasset publishing house — he wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche that he was "a Christian democrat" and dismissed his critics as "a tiny caste who think themselves above everyone else."

The tension at Cannes has been palpable: the Canal+ logo was booed at several screenings, including the opening film The Electric Kiss, with reports of insults directed at Bolloré during a Saturday screening. The "Zappons Bolloré" collective argued that Saada's threat of reprisals only confirms their fears about the erosion of editorial independence within the group. Harari, while insisting the petition was not an attack on Canal+ itself — "Canal+ is one of the pillars of French cinema" — called on the French state to intervene to limit media concentration. The episode mirrors and amplifies a broader cultural reckoning in France over who controls the country's media, publishing, and now its film industry.