The shadow of Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” loomed over the storied steps of this year’s Cannes film festival. Echoing the mid-20th-century blacklist, which shut out about 300 suspected communists from Hollywood, the French media group Canal announced an effective ban on twice that many French cinema professionals, including actors such as Juliette Binoche and film directors such as Jean-Pascal Zadi and Arthur Harari. Their crime? An open letter denouncing the growing influence on French media and cinema of conservative tycoon Vincent Bolloré, Canal ’s main shareholder.

The Canal chief executive, Maxime Saada, justified punishing the signatories on the basis that their claim was an “injustice” against the staff of Canal – who were, he said, committed to the organisation’s independence.

Bolloré has consolidated control over a significant portion of France’s news and entertainment media over the past decade, from the Fox News-like CNews to the Journal du Dimanche, Europe 1 radio, and the publisher Fayard. He is accused of having often shifted the editorial line of his acquisitions towards a rightwing ideological project à la Rupert Murdoch. Recently, his firing of the CEO of the literary publisher Grasset caused a walkout by more than 100 authors – from a political spectrum wide enough to include high-society philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and the feminist novelist Virginie Despentes.

In their petition, which has since garnered the backing of international celebrites such as Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, the film professionals wrote: “By leaving French cinema in the hands of a far-right owner, we risk not only the standardisation of films but a fascist takeover........

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