{"id":2005,"date":"2026-05-20T13:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/20\/pedro-almodovar-europe-must-never-be-subjected-to-trump\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T13:06:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:06:00","slug":"pedro-almodovar-europe-must-never-be-subjected-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/20\/pedro-almodovar-europe-must-never-be-subjected-to-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Pedro Almod\u00f3var: \u201cEurope Must Never Be Subjected to Trump!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tNearly every day at this edition of the Cannes Film Festival, audiences have broken into loud boos when the logo of Canal+ appears before a movie. \u201cIt\u2019s the right-wing media,\u201d one French journalist explained.<\/p>\n

\tAnd artists have been speaking out, including Spanish directing legend Pedro Almod\u00f3var<\/a>, who, during Wednesday\u2019s press conference for his latest film, Bitter Christmas<\/a><\/em>, declared, \u201cI don\u2019t want to judge anyone, but I think artists have to speak out about the situation in which they live in contemporary society. It\u2019s a moral duty,\u201d when asked about the controversy. \t<\/p>\n

\tHe concluded by declaring, \u201cEurope must never be subjected to Trump!\u201d To which the room of international<\/a> journalists burst into applause.<\/p>\n

\tHe was wearing a \u201cFree Palestine\u201d pin.<\/p>\n

\tHere\u2019s the background: On May 12, the opening day of Cannes, 600 members of the film industry, including Juliette Binoche, Ad\u00e8le Haenel and Swann Arlaud (a.k.a. the \u201chot lawyer\u201d from Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>) signed a letter criticizing right-wing billionaire and media mogul Vincent Bollor\u00e9, who owns France\u2019s premier pay-TV channel Canal+ and its production arm Studiocanal, and is in the midst of acquiring UGC, France\u2019s third-largest cinema chain. It\u2019s a situation similar to the media consolidation occurring in the United States with David Ellison\u2019s Paramount-Skydance acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

\tThe letter, published in the newspaper Lib\u00e9ration<\/em>, warned that Bollor\u00e9\u2019s control of the entire film pipeline could lead to a \u201cfascist takeover of the collective imagination.\u201d (Just one month prior, in the book publishing world, more than 100 authors quit the publishing house Grasset, which is owned by Ballor\u00e9, after its publisher, Olivier Nora, was ousted, declaring that they would not be \u201chostages in an ideological war.\u201d) \t<\/p>\n

\tThe situation in the film world was then exacerbated Sunday, when Canal+ CEO Maxine Saada announced that the network would essentially blacklist any artist who\u2019d signed the letter and refuse to work with them. \u201cI don\u2019t want to work with people who call us crypto-fascists,\u201d Saada said at a Cannes producers\u2019 brunch.<\/p>\n

\tAlmod\u00f3var was prompted to speak out when a Spanish journalist asked how he felt about \u201cHollywood being in crisis and Canal+ threatening creators.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe director responded: \u201cSilence is an expression of fear. They\u2019re a symptom that things are going really badly. It\u2019s a serious sign that democracy is a crumbling. Creators must speak out.\u201d He continued, \u201cThe worst thing to happen to us to stay silent or to be censored. We have a moral obligation to speak out about all these things. We need to turn against Netanyahu. In Europe, we have laws, there are certain limits. We have to act as a shield against this madness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly every day at this edition of the Cannes Film Festival, audiences have broken into loud boos when the logo of Canal+ appears before a movie. \u201cIt\u2019s the right-wing media,\u201d one French journalist explained. And artists have been speaking out, including Spanish directing legend Pedro Almod\u00f3var, who, during Wednesday\u2019s press conference for his latest film, Bitter Christmas, declared, \u201cI don\u2019t want to judge anyone, but I think artists have to speak out about the situation in which they live in contemporary society. It\u2019s a moral duty,\u201d when asked about the controversy. He concluded by declaring, \u201cEurope must never be subjected to Trump!\u201d To which the room of international journalists burst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[307,2,116,27,60,996],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannes-2026","category-hollywood","category-international","category-movie-news","category-movies","category-pedro-almodovar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}