Cyrille Bolloré, Chairman and CEO of the Bolloré Group, has addressed an open letter launched at Cannes accusing his father Vincent Bolloré of political interference in France’s media and entertainment sectors.
Speaking at the group’s general assembly in Paris on Wednesday, Cyrille Bolloré evoked an atmosphere of “irritation” and “agitation” in reference to the letter titled “Time To Switch-Off Bolloré”.
Launched on the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival, and initially signed by 600 local film professionals, the letter took aim at the acquisition of a 34% stake in French major UGC, with an option to buy it outright in 2028, by pay-TV giant Canal+, in which the Bolloré Group is the biggest shareholder with a 30.4% stake.
The letter suggested the acquisition was part of a larger project spearheaded by Bolloré Group founder Vincent Bolloré to “push a right-wing, reactionary agenda” in France.
In subsequent interviews, signatories of the letter pointed to the shift to the right of Canal+’s 24-hour news channel CNews (formerly known as i-Télé) as well as Sunday newspaper Le Journal de Dimanche (JDD), a subsidiary of the Louis Hachette Group, in which Bolloré Group also owns a 30.4% stake, as well as recent events published houses Grasset and Fayard.
They said that they feared that there could be similar developments within Canal+ cinema activities in terms of the sorts of projects which got greenlit.
Cyrille Bolloré dismissed these claims at the meeting in Paris on Wednesday, saying: “No, there is no political project”, adding that any such suggestion was “a giant lie”.
The “Time To Switch-Off Bolloré” letter initially drew a muted response from the local industry, with many professionals saying that for now Canal+ was diverse and open in the cinema it gets behind.
However, an announcement by Canal+ Chair and CEO Maxime Saada that his group would no longer work with the letter’s initial 600 signatories has sparked widespread condemnation across the film industry at home and internationally.
Close to 5,000 cinema professionals have now been signed the letter with international stars and directors such as Javier Bardem, Ruben Ostlund and Yorgos Lanthimos lending their support.