French Culture Wars Erupt Over Municipal Cinema As Right-Wing Mayor Removes Name Commemorating Anti-Colonial Director

France’s growing culture wars have its hit arthouse circuit after a right-wing mayor in the small town of Elne in southwest France rebaptized the municipal cinema theater, previously named after late radical anti-colonial director René Vautier.

Elne Mayor Steve Fortel said he was renaming the theater to “La Bobine Illibérienne” for the sake of “neutrality” and because cinema “should not be politicized”. The new name translates as “the Illibérien Reel” and references the fact inhabitants of Elne are called Illibériens or Illibériennes.

The removal of René Vautier’s name from the cinema has sparked anger in the town and France’s wider cinema and cultural world.

A statement from 17 professional cinema bodies including Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (l’ACID), French Art House Cinema Association (AFCAE) and Independent Europeani Distributors United (DIRE) pointed to Vautier’s illustrious past as a member of the French resistance and later anti-colonial director.

“The local art-house cinema, now called ‘La Bobine Illibérienne’, was still named ‘René Vautier’ last week, in homage to the filmmaker, a member of the Resistance and a committed activist, whose eminently political work addressed major social issues such as colonialism, racism, and critiques of capitalism,” it read.

It noted his 1972 work To Be Twenty in the Aurès, about a group of young French pacifists pulled into the violence of the Algerian War, as France attempted to quash the independence movement, as well as his contribution to the liberation of France and fact he was awarded the the Croix de Guerre in 1945 for his service against the Axis forces.

Other highlights of his 180-strong filmography included Afrique 50, which is dubbed the first anti-colonial film. It landed him in prison for its critique of conditions in West Africa under French rule and was banned from being shown in France for more than 40 years.

“Our organizations strongly condemn this highly symbolic decision, which not only reflects a desire to erase the work and struggles of René Vautier, but also alters the cinema’s identity,” continued the cinema bodies.

“This decision, which comes at a time when the municipality is also taking over the cinema’s management, raises legitimate questions about the preservation of its freedom in programming and events (protected by the law of July 7, 2016, concerning freedom of creation, architecture, and heritage, and of which local authorities are the guarantors), and more broadly about the cultural diversity that it must continue to defend.”

In response to the renaming of the theater, a number of independent theaters across France symbolically operated under the banner of René Vautier on Friday, in a show of solidarity for the cinema and its staff.

They also called for support for a petition launched by the inhabitants of Elne calling for the cinema to be returned to its name of René Vautier.

In the backdrop, the renaming of the cinema is just one incident in France’s burgeoning culture wars as it heads towards presidential elections in April 2027, in which far-right politician Marine Le Pen is a leading candidate under the National Rally party.

Fortel, who won as an independent candidate in municipal elections last March, was previously affiliated with the far-right, neo-fascist party The Nationalists.

One of his first acts on taking up his post was to remove LGBT flags from around the town and also freeze funding for the planned refurbishment of the local Château d’en Bardou, home of the former Swiss Maternity of Elne, which gave shelter to hundreds of expectant Republican refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War.