“Unfounded and ungrateful”: David Lisnard criticizes the cinema professionals who signed the anti-Bolloré forum

The anti-Bolloré petition denouncing “the growing influence of the extreme right” on cinema – published Monday May 11 in the columns of Liberation – is invited to the Cannes Film Festival. While the 79th ceremony is in full swing, the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard spoke at the microphone of BFMTV this Monday, May 18, qualifying the demands of the platform “unfounded, ungrateful, and perhaps a little imbecile”, accusing its signatories of “bite the hand that feeds them”. “They should have gone to see the film about Jean Moulin, they would have understood what the real Resistance was,” he declared.

In response to this forum, the CEO of Canal+ Maxime Saada announced on Sunday May 17 that he no longer wanted his group to continue working on the signatories. “I experienced this petition as an injustice towards the Canal teams who are committed to defending the independence of Canal+, and in all the diversity of its choices. And as a result, I will no longer work, I no longer want Canal to work with the people who signed this petition”he said during a speech on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival. Among the signatories, we find the actresses Juliette Binoche and Anna Mouglalis, the actors Swann Arlaud and Jean-Pascal Zadi and the documentary filmmaker Raymond Depardon.

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“French cinema needs Canal+”

David Lisnard stated that there was “no interference with the films screened and financed” and that it was enough to see those which are broadcast at the Cannes Film Festival “to understand that they are not really far-right”. He added that “French cinema (needed) Canal+”, and if the group “had ideological choices in its financing, that would deserve to be highlighted and condemned, but that was not the case”.