“Thank you”: the left hailed the speech of director Justine Triet, who denounced the pension reform after receiving the Palme d’Or in Cannes on Saturday May 28. The protest movement against the reform was “denied and repressed in a shocking way”, denounced Justine Triet, evoking a “scheme of dominating power”. She also felt that the power was trying to “break the [French] cultural exception”.
“Thank you to Justine Triet for her courage in addition to her talent. Cannes returns to its tradition. It was the resistant left that created this festival, ”responded the leader of La France insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Twitter. “Six months that all of France disputes. Six months that we submit to the will of one. Thank you, madam, for keeping your neck stiff”, also supported the number one of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure, while Marine Tondelier, patron of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV), was ironic about this “news from the a hundred days of Macron to appease, live from the Cannes Film Festival”.
“Commodification of bodies, commodification of culture, congratulations to Justine Triet for her Palme d’Or and her speech that strikes so rightly,” added the national secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), Fabien Roussel.
A call for “censorship, blackmailing subsidies”
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak immediately responded to Justine Triet’s comments, saying she was “flabbergasted by her unfair speech”. “This film would not have been possible without our French film funding model, which allows for a diversity unique in the world. Let’s not forget that,” she wrote on social media.
While Justine Triet said she understood the Minister’s “gasp”, she insisted on recalling that “the idea of ??the non-profitability of films” had to be “preserved”, and that Cannes had “always been a place where people were expressing themselves politically in relation to the situation in the country”.
“I find it ungrateful and unfair,” replied the Minister of Culture on Sunday morning on BFM-TV, recalling having announced last week on the Croisette an aid plan for audiovisual and cinematographic creation of 350 million euros. euros by 2030. “In Justine Triet’s speech, there is clearly an ideological background from the far left,” she said.
“I would like her to give me the figures, the facts on which she bases herself to consider that, today, culture is ‘commodified’ and the cultural exception broken”, declared Rima Abdul Malak, insisting on government support for the sector, particularly during the health crisis.
The reaction of the Minister of Culture on Saturday evening made people jump to the left. Olivier Faure said he was “flabbergasted to see a minister of culture who thinks that when you finance a film, you are buying the conscience of its authors”. “Think no more, take your subsidies and silence in the ranks,” the PCF launched ironically.
Figures from the presidential camp entered the debate, provoking a few skirmishes on Twitter. “Anatomy of the ingratitude of a profession that we help so much… and of an art that we love so much”, tackled Roland Lescure, Minister Delegate for Industry, in reference to the award-winning film, Anatomy of a fall. On the same line, David Lisnard, mayor Les Républicains de Cannes, sharply criticized on Twitter a “speech of a spoiled child and so conformist, receiving the prestigious Palme d’Or for his subsidized film”.
“It may be time to stop distributing so much aid to those who have no awareness of what it costs taxpayers,” threatened for his part the chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee of the Assembly, Guillaume Kasbarian (Renaissance). Environmentalist Benjamin Lucas saw it as a call “for censorship, by blackmailing subsidies”: “It’s Le Pen in the text”, according to him.
