Clap of the end for the river partnership between Canal + and the Cannes festival, now in discussions with France Télévisions and the digital media Brut which propose to increase the audiovisual coverage of the Cannes film competition in France and abroad.
Canal +, whose image has been associated with the Cannes Film Festival for almost 30 years, will no longer be its partner for the next edition to be held from May 17 to 28, 2022. Joined by AFP, the Festival has refused to any comments, indicating that they would communicate later.
“Between Cannes and Canal +, it’s a long love story. We faced an escalation from the public service, which offered more money than us”, told JDD Gérald-Brice Viret, director of antennas and programs at Canal +. Now in the running, the France Télévisions group has joined forces with Brut, a multilingual digital 100% video media very popular with under 35s, to resume the official media coverage of the Cannes competition for the next three years.
“No decision has yet been made” and discussions continue “serenely” with Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux, respectively president and general delegate of the Cannes festival, told AFP the public audiovisual group, which claims to have “learned with surprise by the press the decision of Canal +”. “We didn’t want to participate in this escalation, so we withdrew from the tender”, explained Gérald-Brice Viret, assuring that despite the prestige of this competition, “the audience is not always up to par with around 600,000 viewers per gala evening”.
This reading of the facts is contested by several specialists of the Cannes meeting. “Under Rousselet / Lescure / Couture / Farrugia / Meheut, Canal has deployed in Cannes a global device, beneficial to both camps, a bit invasive. From 2008, things have faded: wear and tear, less respected contract. Polled, the public service couldn’t line up. He’s coming back, so much the better! “, reacted on Twitter Gilles Jacob, former president of the Cannes festival. “It is not the Cannes festival which is declining audiences, it is Canal …”, adds a source close to the case to AFP. For another connoisseur of the negotiations, wishing to remain anonymous, “Gérald-Brice Viret says that to better pass the pill but the financial offer is more or less equivalent to that of Canal +, the real difference is that the editorial offer is better”.
“The two aired ceremonies (opening and closing) deserve to be reorganized a little”, concedes Christophe Tardieu, secretary general of France Televisions, requested by AFP. On paper, the various public audiovisual channels – between France 2, France 3, the cultural channel CultureBox or TV5 Monde internationally – are opening up a new media strike force for the Cannes selection. France Televisions “aims to be the media partner of all French festivals that are world champions in their category”, details Christophe Tardieu.
At Brut, we count as ambassador to the festival Renaud Le Van Kim, co-founder of the media in 2016 and former flagship producer of Canal +, dismissed in 2015 when Vincent Bolloré joined the Canal + group. “I have a very intimate professional link with the Cannes Film Festival”, Renaud Le Van Kim told AFP. A huge asset for the director who for 23 years worked on the ceremonies and the promotion of the Cannes festival, in particular via the emblematic Grand Journal, broadcast live from the Croisette.
And to recall that Brut, physically present in 18 countries and more than 80 by language, became the leading social media in Europe last year, overtaking BBC News in terms of views. On average, this media specialist in short videos records 400 million views on Facebook worldwide and affects in France “100% of 15-35 year olds in France”, explains Renaud Le Van Kim.
“The association of the public service, which has monumental firepower, and Brut, will be able to give a very different notoriety to the Cannes festival, to reach populations that the festival does not reach” today, predicts the co-founder of Brut.