The Paris Court of Appeal ruled on Wednesday that French tycoon Vincent Bolloré and his Bolloré Group do not exercise control over media and entertainment group Vivendi.

The ruling, which was confirmed by Vivendi in a statement, is significant because a decision in the opposite direction could have triggered an obligatory buyout of Vivendi by Bolloré, with some estimates suggesting this could have cost the group more than $10B.

The ruling follows a claim by minority Vivendi investor CIAM which began in the wake of Vivendi’s 2024 breakup, and the spinning-off of Canal Plus, Havas, and Louis Hachette.

Under that operation, which won the approval of 97% of the Vivendi shareholders, the Bolloré Group retained a 29.3% stake in Vivendi. Under French law, shareholders surpassing a 30% ownership threshold must launch a buyout offer.

CIAM argued that while Bollore’s stake in Vivendi was under the threshold, it effectively controlled the group.

Following Wednesday’s ruling, CIAM partner and president Catherine Berjal said the investor group would be launching an appeal at the Court of Cassation.

A previous April 2025 Court of Appeal ruling stated that Vivendi was de facto controlled by Vincent Bolloré and the Bolloré Group, paving the way for a mandatory buyout. This was then overruled by the Court of Cassation in November 2025, which referred the case back to the Court of Appeal.

The fresh ruling sees Paris’ Court of Appeal reject Attorney General Carla Deveille-Fontinha’s argument that Bolloré did control Vivendi on the basis that the group had “never encountered any opposition” at AGMs and that “decisions lacking Vincent Bolloré’s support”  were not adopted.

It could also have a knock-on effect for the Universal Music Group, in which the Bolloré Group owns an 18.4% stake, and Vivendi owns a 13.4% stake. There had been suggestions that the Bolloré Group would have to sell it’s UMG stake to finance a mandatory Vivendi buyout.

This possibility has weighed on the UMG share price, while Cyrille Bolloré, Chair and CEO of the Bolloré Group, told the group’s AGM in Paris in May that he had encouraged UMG management to reject a $64.4B offer from Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square.

The BBC‘s new director general will review the UK broadcaster’s foreign content acquisitions strategy amid anger over the corporation outbidding commercial rivals for U.S. series.

Matt Brittin said he wished to examine whether the BBC is getting the “balance right” with buying in content, opening up the possibility that the broadcaster could cut its acquisitions budget.

Brittin’s comments follow concerns from ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 over the BBC using licence fee cash to outspend rivals for shows like Schitt’s Creek.

There was also frustration over the BBC’s decision to poach Warner Bros. Discovery-owned cartoon Scooby-Doo in a competitive situation last year.

Brittin was asked about the Scooby-Doo deal during a hearing held by UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday.

“What’s the public service value in outbidding commercial broadcasters for things like Scooby-Doo when you could be investing in Britain?” asked Natasha Irons, a Labour member of Parliament.

Brittin, who is six weeks into the job, said less than 5% of the BBC’s content budget is spent on foreign acquisitions and that the shows can drive viewing to public service content, such as Newsround. “It’s part of a deliberate strategy to serve audiences,” Brittin said.

He added, however, that the BBC will examine acquisitions in the context of the corporation striving to save £500M ($670M) over the next three years. “That’s something I’m looking at reviewing as part of the cost savings,” Brittin said.

ITV has consistently raised the issue in recent years. In a written submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, ITV said: “We can see no reason for the BBC to use public funds to compete for content that would otherwise find a home on free-to-access commercial services.

“For this reason, we would urge the government to include a new rule in the charter preventing the BBC from using public service broadcasting expenditure for any non-UK acquired content except where the BBC is the purchaser of last resort, and for the BBC to be more transparent about the titles it acquires.”

In its submission, Sky added that the charter, the BBC’s operating agreement, should prevent iPlayer from “evolving into an aggregation platform for third-party content.”

You may have seen quite a few documentaries about Ukraine and the impact of Russia’s war against the country in recent years. But Yuliia Hontaruk‘s To Die to Live, which just world premiered in the Special Screenings program of the  60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), takes a longer-term view and journey.

The film from the director of Ten Seconds follows three Ukrainian volunteers across 12 years of war: “from the frontlines of 2014, through the painful return to a life that no longer quite fits, and back into the fire once more in 2022.”

The KVIFF website describes it as “a quietly devastating film about the impossible task of making peace with death and the unrelenting desire to live.”

To Die to Live explores the stories and traumas of Shakhta, Dancer and Potter who volunteered for the army to fight in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Although the horrible things they experienced during two years on the front accompany them for every second of their existence, they try to return to civilian life. But the Russian invasion in 2022 forces them to again confront the war. 

Written and directed by Hontaruk, the doc from Babylon 13 Production features cinematography by Denys Strashnyi, Yurii Gruzinov and Hontaruk. The editors are Roman Liubyi,Uģis Olte, Mykola Bazarkin, Hontaruk, Iryna Stetsenko, Pavlo Zelenov and Petro Tsymbal. The producers are Hontaruk, Ivanna Khitsinska, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Uldis Cekulis, Katarina Krnacova and Ihor Savychenko.

“Twelve years ago, I followed three young Ukrainian volunteers to the frontline. I thought I was making a film about war. I was wrong,” Hontaruk shares in a director’s statement. “When the Minsk agreements came and they returned home, I followed them back. And that is when the real film began. What I witnessed in the years that followed was a profound and painful journey.”

She concludes: “What began as a portrait of conflict became something I never expected: a film about transformation, about the long and difficult road back to oneself, about how stubbornly life insists on continuing even in the shadow of death. This is not really a film about war. It is about what war leaves inside people, and what they do with it.”

While it is a “delicate” doc, “at its heart, it is life-affirming,” Hontaruk says. “Because despite everything, despite all the loss and rupture and years of waiting, life has proven itself stronger than death. Again and again, I men choose it. That is the film I set out to make, even when I didn’t know it yet.”