Film stars Juliette Binoche and Emmanuelle Beart joined hundreds of people from the arts world in backing France's "yellow vests" movement Saturday, as the latest anti-government marches got underway Saturday. Binoche and Beart joined 1,400 signatories to an open letter published in the left-leaning daily Liberation.
Entitled "Yellow Vests: we are not fooled!", it denounced what it said were attempts to discredit the movement and backed the demands of the protesters. These included calls for greater social and fiscal justice, and radical measures to tackle what they called an ecological emergency. The open letter also condemned what it said were the increasingly repressive measures taken against the movement, noting that international organisations such as United Nations and the European Union had already expressed their concern.
Binoche and Beart were among the most prominent signatories, which also included directors, scriptwriters and composers. Binoche won an Oscar for her role in "The English Patient" while Beart is perhaps best known internationally for her role in the first "Mission Impossible" film. Turnout for Saturday's marches appeared to be down, in the wake of the May Day rallies when yellow vest activists joined the traditional trade union march. An early count from the interior ministry, regularly dismissed as inaccurate by the yellow vest movement, put the turnout at 3,600 across France, including a thousand in the capital.