A reaction that is not going down well. The Human Rights League (LDH) and the CGT Spectacle union announced on Saturday that they are bringing a civil action before the Nanterre judicial court against Canal+. The two organisations denounce what they call "discrimination" targeting the signatories of an anti-Bolloré op-ed, after the group decided to stop working with them.
"Canal+ will appear in court for breaking the law", say CGT Spectacle and the LDH in a statement titled "No discrimination has any place in cinema".
In the text, seen by Euronews, they describe the "unacceptable and brutal decision" by Maxime Saada, chairman of the Canal+ executive board, accusing him of "discriminating on the basis of political and trade-union expression in order to muzzle the voices in the industry that are speaking out against Vincent Bolloré’s growing grip on the entire chain of film production and distribution".
"If some people go so far as to call Canal+ 'crypto-fascist', then I cannot accept working with them", the head of Canal+ said last Sunday. Canal+ is a major player in financing French cinema and belongs to the empire of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
For the LDH and CGT Spectacle, this is not a "knee-jerk reaction" from Maxime Saada in response to criticism from some 600 signatories of the op-ed. He "is fully aware of how essential the group is to film financing in France and of the dependence of the various players in the sector", the statement continues.
