Cyrille Bolloré, who took over from his father Vincent at the helm of the Bolloré Group in 2019, has rejected accusations that his family or Canal+ are pursuing any political agenda, telling shareholders at the group’s annual general meeting in Paris on Wednesday that there is “no political project” and dismissing the idea as “a giant lie.”

He was responding to a controversy that has roiled the French film industry and turned out to be the biggest scandal of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It began with a petition (organized by the collective Zapper Bolloré) signed by some 600 industry figures – including Juliette Binoche and Arthur Harari — warning of Vincent Bolloré’s growing grip over French media and culture. The dispute erupted at the Cannes Film Festival after the roughly 600 professionals — including Juliette Binoche and director Arthur Harari — signed the petition, organized by the collective “Zapper Bolloré.” The signatories pointed to Canal+’s acquisition of a 34% stake in theater chain UGC, with a potential move to full control by 2028, and raised concerns about a rightward editorial shift across Bolloré-linked outlets.

The crisis escalated when Canal+ chairman Maxime Saada said he would no longer finance films from the petition’s signatories. He defended the group’s editorial independence, noting that Canal+ split from Vivendi 18 months ago and is now listed on the London Stock Exchange, and insisted that the company “supports all kinds of cinema, all of its diversity,” citing socially-engaged films such as Boris Lojkine’s “Souleymane’s Story” and Dominik Moll’s “Case 137.”

Rather than quelling the controversy, Saada’s threat amplified it. The petition has since swelled to more than 3,500 signatures, drawing international support from Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo and Ken Loach, among others. Le Monde reported that more than half of recent French films involved professionals who have now signed. The CGT Spectacle union and the Human Rights League (LDH) have since announced legal action for discrimination over Saada’s comments, declaring that “Canal+ will appear before the courts for having broken the law.”

The Bolloré Group is the largest shareholder in Canal+ Group, with a 30.4% stake, and the pay TV stands as one of the biggest financiers of French movies. The issue is that among the group’s holdings is CNews, France’s equivalent of Fox News, which has over the years given a mainstream platform to reactionary and far-right voices — and became the country’s most-watched news channel in 2025. While Vincent Bolloré officially stepped back from operational roles, he is known to still occasionally sit on green-lighting committees at Canal+ Group, fueling concerns about his influence over what the company chooses to back.

The controversy is unfolding in the run-up to France’s 2027 presidential election, in which the far-right Rassemblement National is expected to be a frontrunner — a backdrop that has sharpened anxieties across the cultural sector about concentrated media power. Canal+ Group pledged to invest €480 million in French and European cinema across three years until the end of 2027. The next round of negotiations for a new pact has already begun with French film guilds.

Speaking before shareholders, Cyrille Bolloré struck a deliberately conciliatory tone, describing himself as being “in a posture of appeasement” and calling for “benevolence” amid what he characterized as a climate of “collective irritation and agitation.” Asked directly whether Canal+ would continue financing films from signatories of the petition, he distanced himself from the idea of any blacklist: declining to finance a screenwriter or scrutinizing “who says what,” he said, “is not, in my view, worthy of the debate.” He stressed that he is “not in charge of Canal,” in which the group holds “only a stake.”

He also slammed the characterization of the family and its companies as far-right. “I cannot accept being told that we are fascists, that there is some plan that has been in place for years,” he said, calling the accusation “mind-boggling” and “a giant lie.” He argued that such attacks are counterproductive, “only serving to create tomorrow’s fighters,” and insisted the people he works with “don’t recognize themselves at all” in the portrait drawn by critics.

Pressed by a journalist on whether the Bolloré family exercises oversight of CNews’ editorial line, he called that narrative a “fable” and said he would not bend to the controversy. “Honestly, I’m not going to change anything,” he said, arguing that the heightened scrutiny was predictable considering the pre-election timeline. “We’re a year out from a presidential election… it’s the same circus every time.”

On his own politics, Bolloré said, “I’ve never campaigned for anything. I’ve always tended to vote center — left or right — I have never, at this stage, voted for an extreme.” He framed the rise of France’s political extremes as a consequence of mainstream failure rather than ideology, arguing that successive leaders “have ruined the country” and that voters were left wanting to “give a good kick in the butt” to those who had governed poorly for decades.