The crisis is intensifying around the Césars, whose ceremony will be held on February 28 live on Canal +. After the stormy “Revelation dinner” and successive press releases from the Société des Réalisateurs Français and the Syndicate of Independent Producers, the Academy was once again severely attacked.
In a text that should appear this Wednesday in Le Monde and that we have obtained, dozens of actors, directors and producers, including many stars, claim "an in-depth overhaul of the modes of governance of the Association (Editor's note) : the Association for the Promotion of Cinema, which manages the Academy of the Caesars), […] and the democratic operations that govern them ”.
A fire signed by the actors Omar Sy, Virginie Efira, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Marina Foïs, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Leïla Bekthi, Gilles Lellouche, Léa Seydoux or Karin Viard, by the directors Jacques Audiard, Emmanuelle Bercot, Bertrand Bonello, Pascal Bonitzer, Robert Guédiguian, Michel Hazanavicius, Agnès Jaoui, Cédric Klapisch, Eric Toledano or Olivier Nakache, by producers Eric and Nicolas Altmayer, Saïd ben Saïd, Edouard Weil, Marie-Ange Luciani… In short, by all those who matter in French cinema today 'hui.
The latter ensure that the 4700 members of the Academy have “no voice in the chapter, neither in the functioning of the Academy and the Association, nor in the course of the ceremony. "She underlines the financial opacity of the Academy:" Until a few years ago, the annual accounts of the Association and its statutes appeared on the Césars website (in the part reserved for members), but this is no longer the case today. This opacity of the accounts is damaging and part of a potentially fantastical vision of how the money is spent. "
Lack of parity, coopted members…
The signatories also criticize the composition of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema, which governs the Academy: among the 47 members, some would have been "co-opted for life" "more than twenty years ago". The signatories then refer to the promise made in the JDD of February 9 by Alain Terzian, the president of the Césars, to integrate a dozen women in the Association: “It would again be a system of cooptation , a vestige of an era that we would like to be over, that of an elitist and closed system ”, they underline.
"All of this leads to a structure where the majority of the members of the Academy are not found in the choices that are made in their name and which do not reflect the vitality of current French cinema," concludes the text. The authors wonder: "Why can't the 4,700 members of the Academy vote to elect their representatives as is the case at the Oscars, the Baftas (Editor's note: the English Caesars) or the EFA (l 'European Film Academy) ? Why is the Academy governed by a club of people co-opted or designated drop by drop? How is it that the members of the association are for life and that its leaders are indefinitely re-eligible? "
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At the time when the list of signatories grew, this Monday around 8 pm, the Academy published a press release on "the measures to come for the modernization of the Caesars". The text ensures that the Association for the Promotion of Cinema has "drawn multiple conclusions" from recent reviews, that it will implement parity among its members and the college of voters and will modify the statutes of entry into the 'Association in order to "reweave the link between the generations". The text announces that the president of the National Cinema Center will appoint after the next ceremony a mediator responsible for ensuring the implementation of these measures. Not sure that this is enough to calm the sling.