France’s top film producer says it will blacklist figures who petitioned against rightwing billionaire

Canal+ head says he will not work with hundreds of actors and directors who signed protest against Vincent Bolloré’s political sway The head of France’s biggest film producer, Canal+, has said the group will no longer work with hundreds of cinema figures who signed a petition voicing concern over the growing influence of the rightwing billionaire owner Vincent Bolloré. The open letter, published earlier this week to coincide with the opening of the Cannes film festival, was signed by more than 600 figures, including the actor-director Juliette Binoche, the director and photographer Raymond Depardon, the French-Iranian film-maker Sepideh Farsi and the director Arthur Harari, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and is premiering his film The Unknown in the main competition in Cannes. They said 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”. Bolloré, a conservative industrialist, has a powerful media empire, which includes Canal+ and its in-house production operation, StudioCanal, which is Europe’s leading film and television production and