On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, some 600 French film professionals, including acclaimed actors Juliette Binoche, Adèle Haenel, Swann Arlaud and Damien Bonnard, have signed an open letter opposing plans by right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré to take full control of UGC, France’s third-largest cinema chain.

The letter, published in left-leaning French newspaper Libération, warned that the takeover deal by Bolloré, whose media empire has been accused of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas, would amount to a “fascist takeover of the collective imagination.”

Through his media company Vivendi, Bolloré already owns Canal+, France’s largest pay-TV company, and its subsidiary Studiocanal, Europe’s leading film production company. Through Canal+, Bolloré holds a 34 percent stake in the UGC cinema chain, but he has announced plans to take full control of UGC by 2028. Bolloré’s media empire includes CNews, a popular French news channel that figures on the left have attacked for allegedly giving a platform to far-right voices.

The film industry backlash against Bolloré follows a protest by more than 100 writers, who last month quit the historic French publishing house Grasset, another Bolloré asset, accusing him of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas. In a French senate hearing in 2022, Bolloré denied any political or ideological motive in his media acquisitions, saying his interest in the film and TV business was purely financial and about expanding French cultural soft power.

In the letter, the French film professionals, which include producers, distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers, technicians, and crew, said they all, to varying degrees now depend on Vincent Bolloré’s money for our projects as well as our salaries,” but that they felt compelled to “break the silence insidiously imposed on our industry. They accuse Bolloré of leading “a reactionary, far-right “civilizational project” through his television channels like CNews and his publishing houses. While the influence of this ideological offensive on film content has been discreet so far, we are under no illusions: it won’t last.”

The group warns that the UGC deal will give Bolloré an “unprecedented concentration” of financial power within the French film industry, giving him “complete freedom to act when the time comes. We won’t be able to say we didn’t know.”

Noting that France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has called for the dismantling of key institutes in the French film industry, including the national film board CNC, and the French public broadcasting system, the letter asks: “Do we want to risk a future where only propaganda films serving an ideology are funded?”