• One speech and the political world is in turmoil. The words of Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, have provoked many reactions, sometimes very virulent.
  • So, is Cannes a festival of the "resistant left" or apolitical? Is the world of cinema worried about nothing? Are films "bottled to public aid"?
  • Let's take stock.

Four days later, the speech of Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, on the risk of commodification of culture still does not pass. In "Quotidien" on May 30, Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak defended her position, saying she was "stunned" by "ungrateful and unfair remarks". On the set of the show, she indicated that she was asking for "neither gratitude nor recognition". But repeats that she does not see "why there is to worry and to give such excessive speeches that suggest that we are destroying our model of cultural exception when not at all".

  • Worries for nothing?

However, Justine Triet is not the only one to worry in the world of cinema. Everything is linked to the operation of the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animé (CNC), an institution created in 1946, which collects and distributes aid for the production and production of films. The government's reappointment of Dominique Boutonnat as head of the CNC in July 2022 had already been highly contested. The latter must be tried for sexual assault on his godson, accusations he denies. In February 2021, the representative bodies of the cinema had requested his withdrawal pending the trial.

Other grievances are alleged against him. In July 2022, one of these bodies, the Society of Film Directors (SRF) opposed its renewal. While she has acknowledged "some progress", she has denounced since her appointment in 2019 a "growing blurring of the boundaries between cinema and audiovisual, the redistribution of aid in favour of films already supported by the market, the multiplication, within the committees, of performance and profitability criteria". The SRF also supported Justine Triet in a statement following her speech. The director also recalled in her speech that "without this cultural exception, [she] would not be here" in Cannes.



Rima Abdul-Malak, she wanted to defend Emmanuel Macron's record on TMC and mentioned in particular the support fund for artists during the Covid crisis, the introduction of a tax on YouTube or Apple content in 2018 to finance creation, or the new support plan to help filming with 350 million euros planned until 2030.

  • The debate on the origins of the festival, created in 1939, and its apoliticism

Mixing politics and cinema, is it a betrayal of the original spirit? Many reproached Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who supported Justine Triet's speech and hailed "the resistant left that had created the festival". Clementine Fauré-Bellaïche, an assistant professor at a US university, retorted that it was "nonsense". "It was Jean Zay, a Jew, resistance fighter, murdered by the Militia, who created the Festival - precisely so that cinema escapes any political and ideological recuperation. In response to the palm of the Mostra, spun to L. Riefenstahl under pressure from Hitler, "she summarized, a response retweeted by Aurore Bergé, the president of the Renaissance group in the National Assembly.

Two incompatible readings? Not so sure, because this political ambivalence is found from the origins of the festival, explains historian Olivier Loubes, author of Cannes, 1939, the festival that did not take place (ed. Armand Collin). It should be remembered that the first festival was cancelled a few days before the opening, scheduled for September 1, 1939, the beginning of the Second World War. Cannes is well thought of as a "counter-Mostra," says Olivier Loubes, "in reaction to and to counter the fascist and Nazi politicization of the August 1938 list". The Venice Film Festival then awarded two films, an Italian fascist film, Luciano Serra pilota, co-produced by Mussolini's son, and a Nazi film, The Gods of the Stadium by Leni Riefenstahl, about the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. And this award was awarded on "the very strong recommendation, we have his notebooks so we know, of [Nazi propaganda minister] Joseph Goebbels," says the historian.

"The origin of Cannes 1939 is very political, it is unquestionably anti-fascist," he says. But the basis on which this announcement of the foundation of a new festival will be made is precisely to say: "we must set up a festival of the free world", this is the vocabulary used, in the face of the politicization operated by the fascist and Nazi powers of the Axis. In the 1939 regulation, the word anti-fascism does not appear, "especially not," adds Olivier Loubes. "The regulation says that it is the free world that goes as far as the Soviet Union, that all this is not political, but the application of the regulation is eminently geopolitical and anti-fascist," he said, citing the decision to select, for example, a Czechoslovak film when the country had been annexed by Hitler.

Jean Zay, identified with the left of the Radical Party and Minister of Education and Fine Arts in the government of Léon Blum's Popular Front, is "the bearer of a line that wants to show the cultural strength of democracies, a left that wishes to resist the rise of fascism including through an international cultural policy," he said. But, it is "under the guise of apoliticism," jokes the historian. For us, it is paradoxical, at the time, it is very clear. Imagining and then creating an alternative festival is of course political. Even in the factory of the jury, of the prize list, there is a political DNA in Cannes since 1939, it is indisputable! Always on the basis of this political liberalism that presents itself as 'there is no need for politics in cinema', this is what makes it possible to use it on both sides nowadays," he concludes.

"We regularly replay the original scene from 1939," he adds. But the watertight sphere between politics and cinema is an illusion. This is true in the cultural or sporting field: these are activities that affect too many people not to be political. »

  • Is French cinema "bottled to public aid"?

Finally, in the breach opened by the criticism of the Minister of Culture, deputies of the presidential majority did not have words harsh enough to denounce the speech of Justine Triet. Virulent outputs that the minister did not wish to comment on TMC.

"This little microcosm bottled to public aid as never before that castigates a neoliberal policy", was annoyed on May 27 on Twitter Guillaume Kasbarian, deputy Renaissance of Eure-et-Loir, when Maud Bregeon, the deputy of Hauts-de-Seine, attacked in very similar terms to "a small bourgeois microcosm bottled to public money" on BFMTV. "It may be time to stop distributing so much aid to those who have no awareness of what it costs taxpayers," threatened Guillaume Kasbarian.

Film financing is, in fact, much more nuanced. And above all, the CNC's support fund for cinema, audiovisual and multimedia is almost self-financed via three taxes: one on cinema admissions (TSA), on television services (TST) and on physical or online video services (TSV), which includes the sale of DVDs, Blue-Ray or video on demand. Thus, in 2020, this support fund was financed more than 85% by these three taxes. This is also what recalled on Twitter, Pierre Lescure, former president of the Cannes Film Festival, asking to "stop talking about public money".


Whatever you think of Justine Triet's words, stop talking about public money and find out about the CNC and its financing (on its website).
The system dates back to 46 (financed by box office receipts (including US films).
Completed in 84/86 by TV obligations (summary).

— Pierre Lescure (@pierrelescure) May 27, 2023

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Anatomy of a Fall, the film by Justine Triet, whose total budget is 6.2 million euros, was financed by a mixture of private and public funds. According to the financing plan published by Ecran Total, and reprinted in Le Monde, 35.7% of the film's budget comes from public institutions, or 50.2% if the contributions of France 2, owned by the State, are added. But, as Pierre Lescure also explains on Twitter, "the contributions of the channels are a give-and-take for the broadcast of films". The same goes for Canal+, which financed the film to the tune of 1.2 million euros in private funds.

Le Monde also points out that some sums are advances on revenue or grant exploitation rights. Aid that gives no right of scrutiny to the State. The SRF also recalled in its statement of support for Justine Triet that "everyone has the inalienable right to criticize the power in place even if it is a filmmaker who has benefited from public funding".

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