I’ve always loved movies, but something that struck me is how little we actually talk about their posters. They’re everywhere, in cinemas, on walls, now mostly online, but we don’t really pay attention to them. And yet, those posters say a lot. They don’t just sell a film, they show how Hollywood plays with our desires, how culture changes with technology, and sometimes how fans are even more creative than studios themselves. Honestly, I feel like the real story of cinema might be hiding in plain sight, right there on the poster.

The Golden Age of Movie Posters

People call the 1910s to 1930s the golden age of movie posters. Not because Hollywood suddenly cared about art, but because they had no choice. Printing was expensive, colors were limited, and the poster had to catch someone’s attention from far away in the street. Designers had to do a lot with very little.

One of my favorites is Metropolis (1927). The artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm didn’t just draw a robot with skyscrapers. He basically turned a whole idea of the future into a single image. Even if you had no clue about the plot, just walking past it, you knew this was about technology, myth, and pure awe.

The original German three-sheet poster for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), designed by Heinz Schulz-Neudamm.

What I find funny is the paradox. These posters feel artistic not because the artists had unlimited freedom, but because they had less. No giant actors’ faces to put in, no lawyers telling them which star had to be bigger. They just had one mission: turn a film into a single powerful image. And because of that, I think that the posters were clearer, stronger.

I also realized this “one powerful image” thing didn’t look the same everywhere. Different countries solved the same problem with totally different tools: printing tech, censorship rules, even paper sizes.

German posters were about expressionism and geometry because theaters were competing in crowded city centers and posters had to shout from a distance, like the Metropolis one.

On the opposite, French affiches were painterly and theatrical. The market there liked romance, elegance, and poetic montage. Their posters came out of the “affiche” tradition (Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec). Even for big films like Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), the posters had brushstrokes, romantic silhouettes and elegant typography. It is less about shock, more about style. Even when selling American films, French posters often reframed them with a lyrical vibe.

French movie poster for Abel Gance’s (1927).

And that’s maybe the real magic of this so-called golden age: each country translated cinema into its own language, but all of them were chasing the same goal : condensing an entire film into one single image. And I feel like, without knowing it, they were already doing marketing the way we think of it today. They created symbols. One poster, one picture, that represented a whole movie.

Saul Bass and the Psychology of Posters

If the golden age showed people what to desire, Saul Bass showed them how to feel. In the 1950s and 60s, his posters were super minimal, almost abstract. I think that’s what makes them so powerful. He wasn’t trying to explain the story, he just wanted you to feel something before even watching the film.

That’s what fascinates me about him. Instead of selling you the plot, Bass sold you an emotion. His posters were basically asking: what should you feel when you walk into the theater? Should you be anxious, paranoid, obsessed? He designed the psychology of cinema.

My favorite example is Vertigo (1958) : the spiral swallowing two tiny figures (no actors). Just this one image that already makes you feel dizzy and uneasy, just like Hitchcock’s film. I think that’s genius. People often call it one of the best posters ever made, and I agree. It doesn’t give you information, it sets the mood in your head.

He could take a whole film and reduce it to one unforgettable sign. The torn body in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the little running man in North by Northwest (1959)… They’re like logos. And it makes sense, because Bass also designed real logos for companies. He knew exactly how to make shapes stick in your memory. He proved a poster could be both art and advertising.

The 1958 movie poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, designed by Saul Bass

And what’s interesting is that he wasn’t alone. In the same period and until the 80’s in Poland, designers were reinventing posters too, but for totally different reasons. Poland often didn’t license US studio art, so designers had to reinvent imported films from scratch, it created interpretation.

The 1968 Polish poster for Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, designed by Andrzej Klimowski

But if the 50s and 60s proved a poster could still be art, the decades that followed went in the other direction. By the 1990s, the artist had lost control, and the stars’ faces had taken over.

The Rise of the “Floating Heads”

By the 1990s, posters had a new boss: not the illustrator, not even the designer, but the stars themselves. The studio played it safe by focusing on what sold best: famous faces. That’s how we got the formula we all know today : big heads lined up, glowing against an orange-and-blue background, sometimes with sparks or explosions just to fill the space.

Critics call this the Photoshop era. Not really because of the software, but because of the laziness it made possible. I feel like a poster could be built like a PowerPoint slide: drag, drop, align. It started to look like a template.

A set of six promotional posters, illustrating the “floating heads”poster design style.

So, these clichés were tested to work all over the world. Fireballs, blue glows, serious expressions means action everywhere, no matter the culture. So subtlety disappeared. What mattered is that anyone could “read” the poster instantly, even at thumbnail size.

Sadly, it worked, because a face is the easiest thing to recognize. There’s this idea from the sociologist Richard Dyer : stars are like “texts”, people already project meanings onto them. So, smartly, the floating heads formula took that literally. The poster didn’t interpret the film anymore, it just showed a catalogue of actors with ready-made meanings attached to them.

And it was efficient. If you only swap faces, you can keep the same layout : Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dune…

But I truly feel like something got lost. That’s why I imagined (thanks to AI) Saul Bass’s Vertigo. Instead of the hypnotic spiral, you’d get James Stewart and Kim Novak staring seriously over San Francisco Bay, in teal and orange. It tells you who is in the movie, but not what the movie feels like.

AI-generated reinterpretation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), redesigned in the modern “floating heads” formula.

That’s the tragedy, I think. Posters stopped being interpretations. They didn’t make you wonder or dream anymore. They just reassured you : “Don’t worry, you know exactly what you’re getting.” Desire was replaced by recognition.

For me, the floating heads formula marks a big shift. Posters went from being a creative lens on the story to being proof of who got paid to be in it.

Movie Posters in the Age of Algorithms

Since 2020, posters have a new boss: the algorithm. On Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime, a poster isn’t really a poster anymore : it’s a tiny thumbnail, fighting for attention on a crowded screen. So what works are giant faces, bold colors, and titles you can read instantly on a phone screen.

But I think that the craziest part is that studios don’t even guess what works anymore, they test it. Streaming platforms run A/B experiments all the time : does a red background get more clicks than a blue one? Does showing the star’s face work better than showing the group? The real designer of posters today isn’t the artist : it’s the algorithm. Every choice, from color to composition, is data-driven, and is constantly shaping what we end up clickin on.

The 2015 Netflix thumbnails for Sense8, highlighting regional variations in viewer engagement.

But what really blows my mind is that two people might not even see the same poster for the same film : one person might get the romance version, another gets the action version, all based on what the platform thinks will make them press play. The poster doesn’t just advertise the movie anymore, it advertises a version of the movie that’s tailored to you.

That’s why so many posters today feel interchangeable. They’re not designed to surprise, but to conform, and it’s all about playing it safe. In marketing theory that’s called risk minimization. Because when failure is expensive, studios prefer sameness over difference.  So where the poster used to be a space of invention, it is now like a standardized product.

But I’m a hopeful person, and I feel like if we look well we can find some films that prove that a bold poster can work. For exemple, Parasite (2019) used those eerie black censor bars across the characters’ eyes. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) went completely over the top, with a chaotic collage that felt like the movie itself. And The Lobster (2015) had Colin Farrell hugging empty air which captured the film’s absurd mood in one shot. None of these relied on floating heads or explosions, it was about curiosity, mystery, discomfort. And they worked.

There’s this idea that I like a lot, from scholar Jonathan Gray : posters and trailers shape our expectations as much as the films themselves. I think that’s so true, for example, before you even saw Parasite, those censor bars had already framed it as a story about class, and censorship. The poster became part of the cultural meaning of the film.

And outside Hollywood, posters are still alive in other ways. On Letterboxd, for example, film fans can choose alternative designs for their profiles (festival versions, vintage ones…). But there is also fan-arts, and some of those fan-made posters even spread further than the official ones, and collectors buy limited runs from studios like Mondo that sell out instantly, treated like art prints instead of ads (As I feel it should be, art).

A 2023 Mondo poster for Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, illustrated by Gian Galang

The 2008 minimal poster for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, designed by Chungkong

The 2024 Mondo poster for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, illustrated by Hans Woody.

So yes, the algorithm has made most official posters feel the same. But in the margins, in fan culture and alternative art, the poster is still experimenting, still surprising. To me, that’s a good reminder : a poster doesn’t have to be just marketing. It can still be something we desire for itself…

A poster is not just an ad, it’s the very first image of a movie that you’ll carry in your head before the lights go down. It can shape the way you watch the story, sometimes even more than the trailer or the reviews.

And maybe that’s why I care so much about them. I never watch trailers, I never read reviews before going to the cinema, so the poster is the only thing I allow myself. It’s the very single image that, for me, sets the mood and the expectation.

For me, the movie always begins long before the opening scene : it begins with its poster.

Author: Camille Caye

A year after Fayard was acquired by Vivendi and Lise Boëll, former publisher of Éric Zemmour, was appointed as its director, the house is now releasing Ce que je cherche, the first book by Jordan Bardella, president of the Rassemblement National (far-right french political party). Vincent Bolloré, the French billionaire, already controls a vast media empire (Canal+, CNews, C8, Europe 1, Le Journal du Dimanche, Prisma Media, etc.), whose ideological influence is hard to deny. His growing grip on the French publishing sector now raises serious concerns about the erosion of editorial independence and the ideological shift that such concentration of power may bring.

“Le liseur aux canaris”, creation of the artist-designer Stéphane Phélippot, rue de la Fosse, Nantes

The History of publishing concentration

The French book trade took shape in the 19th century, driven by reforms aimed at expanding public education. In the 1930s, Louis Hachette made a name for himself thanks to orders from the Ministry of Public Education for Emille Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue Française (Dictionary of the French Language) and children’s book collections. At the same time, Pierre Larousse and other houses such as Hatier and Nathan were gaining ground in the book market. In the 20th century, mass culture expanded with increasing print runs and sales. This period also saw the creation of the first major literary prizes, including the Prix Goncourt (1903) and the Prix Femina (1904). At that time, a handful of major historical publishing houses took the helm, including Hachette, Calmann-Lévy, Plon, Hetzzel, Garnier, Flammarion and Fayard, joined by Albin Michel and Grasset at the dawn of the 20th century.

During the Second World War, publishing became deeply political : collaboration with German authorities led to the dismissal of Jewish staff, the promotion of German-language authors, and even the plundering of Calmann-Lévy, a Jewish-owned publishing house. Despite the presence of publishing houses involved in the resistance, such as Les Editions de Minuit, historian Jean-Yves Mollier explains this subservience to the occupation by ‘their boundless admiration for Marshal Pétain, or the long submission of this profession to the imperatives of censorship for several centuries’. After the occupation, the provisional government entrusted Hachette to a cooperative organisation to break its monopoly. However, the company fought back and regained control of the structure in 1947.

This political dimension of publishing has never disappeared, partly because the sector has long been dominated by a small economic elite. Indeed, the sector’s growth has been accompanied by increasing concentration, particularly during the 1990s, when the largest groups dominated the market, while the majority of publishers shared the rest. The arrival on the market of Jean-Luc Lagardère, who became the main shareholder of Hachette and bought Hatier, its subsidiaries and then Vivendi Universal Publishing, reinforced this concentration. IInstitutions became involved, and the European Commission intervened to ensure that Hachette, already the market leader, retained only 40% of Vivendi. Yet it quickly became clear that public authorities had limited influence over this growing phenomenon of concentration.

Today, five groups account for 75% of the publishing sector’s turnover : Hachette (Fayard, Stock, Grasset, Larousse), Editis (La Découverte, Delcourt, etc.), Media Participation (Seuil, Fleurus, Dargaud), Madrigall (Gallimard, Flammarion, etc.) and Albin Michel. As Olivier Legrain reminds us in his book Sauver l’Information de l’Emprise des milliardaires, “publishing is a medium.” Books are a powerful vehicle for ideology and influence. Like the media, they attract billionaires in search of power and gradually shape public opinion. It is therefore understandable that buying up publishing companies is a low-cost way for billionaires to exercise control over what is said: with the exception of Hachette and Editis, the major groups are each worth between €200 million and €500 million, which is nothing compared to investments in the media, which require colossal investments accompanied by social plans.

An overpowering minority confronting a majority that struggles to make its voice heard

But what is the concrete impact of this handful of billionaires controlling publishing ? First, independent publishers are being crushed by strategies of invisibility and massive advertising. Maud Leroy, who founded Editions des Lisières in 2016, testifies : ‘I set up my publishing house to give a voice to women, colonised peoples and rural communities. I’ve only been able to make a living from my work for the past year ; before that, it was voluntary work so that I could pay the authors.’ Jean-Yves Mollier, a historian specialising in publishing, explains this concentration partly by France’s strong centralisation. Why, he asks, is Paris the only major literary hub when other dynamic cities could also host publishing activity ? Large publishing groups such as Hachette are not only publishers but also distributors. They promote their own books and therefore wield more influence over bookshops than independent publishers, who cannot, for instance, offer discounts in exchange for visibility.

Bookshop frontage, Coiffard, rue de la Fosse, Nantes

Another, and perhaps the most dangerous, consequence is the power of influence publishing carries. For example, it is very easy to subtly devote laudatory biographies to political figures, or to give more visibility to a particular author (often on the right or far right of the political spectrum). This summer, Sonia Mabrouk, a prominent figure in the media controlled by Bolloré (journalist, radio and television presenter, notably at Europe 1), was appointed director of a collection published by Fayard entitled ‘Pensée Libre’ (Free Thought). This invocation of ‘freedom of expression’ gives free rein to far-right figures such as Robert Sarah (a fierce critic of homosexuality and abortion rights), Éric Ciotti, Jordan Bardella, and Philippe de Villiers. This was facilitated by the appointment of Lise Boëll, Zemmour’s publisher, as head of Fayard Publishing a few months after its acquisition by Bolloré. As with Europe 1 and the entire Bolloré media sphere, the voice of the far right is becoming increasingly vocal and spreading at breakneck speed, with books serving as a medium for this. It is also important to remember that Fayard has historically been left-leaning. The house notably published Barack and Michelle Obama’s French edition of Mein Kampf: Historiciser le mal (Historicising Evil), a critical work that analyses the origins of Nazism and the dangers of its ideology. The political shift made by the publishing house is therefore surprising in its speed and the ease with which ideological discourses are put in place.

Photograph of Sonia Mabrouk

The need to take action

One solution proposed by Thierry Discepelo, author of La Trahison des Editeurs would be to grant independent publishers special status and offer them tax breaks and preferential postal rates to counter the publishing magnates. The ‘Déborder Bolloré’ project is an initiative that originated within the independent media : how to deal with Bolloré’s monopoly on the media and now publishing ? This collective work brings together around a hundred independent publishing houses. It questions the growing concentration of publishing, and more broadly, of the media, in the hands of a far-right billionaire. On the one hand, it aims to highlight the dangerous ideological shift that this implies, and on the other, to encourage mobilisation and collaboration between committed publishers.  This project gives independent publishers autonomy and supports the call for a boycott launched by independent bookshops of books published by Bolloré’s groups. In fact, following Bolloré’s takeover of Hachette, 80 independent bookshops have announced that books owned by the billionaire will not be given any visibility and will even be removed from the shelves. With this gesture, booksellers affirm their refusal to become a ‘propaganda tool for reactionary forces’. They explain that it is not all authors published by Hachette who are targeted, but rather the financing behind a monopoly that ‘aims to destroy (them).’

Literature section shelf, FNAC, Place du Commerce, Nantes

These movements are in line with the ‘Désarmer Bolloré’ (Disarm Bolloré) collective, which defines its appeal in these terms: « While we can temporarily rejoice that the Rassemblement National did not ultimately succeed in winning these elections, it intends to continue its conquest of territories and imaginations. We must, without waiting for the next elections, join forces against the forces of fascism in society. / We therefore call for a battle against Bolloré everywhere : because he is responsible for ecological devastation and neo-colonial exploitation, but also because in just a few years he has become a major lever in the far right’s conquest of power. For this collective, the battle we must fight is not merely about books but about ideology itself. They denounce the monopolisation of public discourse by far-right figures such as Pascal Praud, Eric Zemmour, and Cyril Hanouna, who promote a “civilisational project” and manipulate public opinion through toxic rhetoric. Fundamental issues such as feminism, LGBTQI+ rights, the climate crisis, and immigration are being hijacked by the Bolloré empire to spread far-right rhetoric, gradually normalising hate-filled ideas that should never be accepted in a democratic society.

The collective reminds us how this empire was built : first and foremost, through the media, with the takeover of Vivendi, Universal, Canal+, Europe 1 and Cnews. Then, thanks to its industrial weight with the Bolloré Energy company, which owns several oil depots, sells domestic fuel and Blue, and is also investing in a very worrying way in companies specialising in the automation of surveillance methods. He is also the second largest shareholder in the Luxembourg holding company Sofcin, which is shamelessly involved in deforestation, land grabbing and inhumane working conditions in Africa and Asia in order to make a fortune from the cultivation and sale of tobacco. It is clear that Bolloré is not only a threat to publishers, he threatens us all, and it is of paramount importance to stand up to his empire.

Logo of Bolloré

Culture under the strain of capitalism

This dangerous turning point affects not only publishing but all forms of media. The capitalist system allows the richest 10% to hold 55% of total wealth, giving them disproportionate control over the circulation of ideas, art, and culture. What is really being called into question is cultural democracy : if the plurality of voices is threatened, it is democracy as a whole that suffers. To combat this phenomenon, institutions must intervene through more effective regulatory tools (anti-concentration laws) but also through concrete civil action. Furthermore, readers who choose independent authors or buy from small bookshops instead of FNAC or Amazon are already contributing to this form of resistance. And as we have seen previously, what sets these billionaires apart is that they dominate all spheres of discourse and information : the media, polling institutes, social networks, and many sectors of industry. This is where we must remain vigilant and be careful about what we consume : which media do we choose to read, watch, and listen to ? What figures do we use ? (Pierre-Edouard Sternin, the founder of Smart Box, knows exactly how to instil his ideology, particularly through his Pericles project and the founding of his polling institute). What books do we read ? Vigilance and commitment will be our means of resisting the far right and fighting for democracy.

Central aisle of the store, FNAC, rue du commerce, Nantes

Author : Justine Calmels

Photographer : Chloé Descamps

Sources

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2. Déborder Bolloré: Une stratégie collective pour l’édition indépendante. (n.d.). Retrieved 28 September 2025, from https://www.medianes.org/deborder-bollore-une-strategie-collective-pour-ledition-independante/
3. Édition: Un an après, le massacre de Hachette par Bolloré. (2025, January 2). https://www.blast-info.fr/articles/2024/edition-un-an-apres-le-massacre-de-hachette-par-bollore-DUaCFDbrS2W-IdDraSv50g
4. Face au groupe Bolloré, des librairies refusent « d’être l’outil de propagande des forces réactionnaires ». (2024, November 26). Basta! https://basta.media/Face-groupe-Bollore-des-librairies-refusent-etre-outil-propagande-forces-reactionnaires
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6. Fayard ménage une place pour Sonia Mabrouk, star de la bollosphère. (n.d.). ActuaLitté.com. Retrieved 28 September 2025, from https://actualitte.com/article/124352/edition/fayard-menage-une-place-pour-sonia-mabrouk-star-de-la-bollosphere
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“We gather our forces. Then we surround them, and afterwards we strike.”
These words, spoken on September 2 by the resigning Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, targeted a free party that had been taking place for two days on land devastated just weeks earlier by wildfires, near the village of Coustouge in the Aude region. A striking phrase that illustrates the severity with which the State intends to repress these parties, labeled as “sauvages”, as well as the controversies that are surrounding this underground world.

Yet it is difficult to ignore that, for tens of thousands of people in France, these parties are not mere disturbances but a genuine culture: the “free party” or “teuf”. The recent release of the film Sirat, which opens with a free party scene in the Moroccan desert, gives an opposite vision of this way of partying : a world where human connections and mutual support are strong, and where music and dance take center stage.

Caught between police repression, media stigmatization and cultural self-affirmation, the free party remains a contested phenomenon. Is it primarily a space of drug trafficking and nuisance, or is it a real alternative culture? To answer this, let’s explore the movement’s history, trace its evolution, its values and its codes, and finally examine the current issues and the repression that have accompanied it since its origins, and why it is perceived as problematic by a part of society.

The story of a culture of free and anti-system parties

First of all, to define what these “wild” parties called free parties are, we need to retrace their history and what has led to the current situation

Free parties trace their roots back to the British rave culture of the 1980s, born when house music and acid house were imported from the United States. In the UK at that time, a new way of partying emerged around these styles of music: dancing all night to hypnotic beats in alternative spaces such as warehouses and underground clubs, often facilitated by the use of drugs like ecstasy.

The British government, however, saw these gatherings as a threat. In 1994 it passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, a law that explicitly targeted events built around “repetitive beats.”, strictly supervising the legal scene and criminalizing the illegal and spontaneous parties. Gradually, the scene radicalized in response to such restrictions, and the parties took on an increasingly political and illegal dimension.

Collectives like Spiral Tribe began organizing clandestine raves marked by a strong Do It Yourself and anti-system philosophy: autonomous organization, squatting venues for a single night, no ticket sales, and information spread only by word of mouth, or using private phone lines to get the location. The principles and foundations of the free party movement were born.

After the crackdown in England, Spiral Tribe and other crews left for the continent, mainly coming to France. In 1993, they organized the first teknival, a gathering of sound systems lasting several days. The movement grew enormously, with free parties multiplying and the emergence of numerous sound systems, notably Heretik, OQP, etc. But as in England, the public authorities in France sought to crack down on the movement as soon as it arrived, even though they had already been at war with “rave parties”, the legal equivalent of free parties, for several years. In the 2000s, French law (notably the Mariani Law of 2002) regulated techno gatherings: mandatory declaration for more than 250 people, seizure of equipment, police checks and even repression. However, the free party movement gradually spread throughout Europe, with teknivals still taking place in Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Romania, etc.

The free party: the quintessence of counterculture?

Having traced the history of the movement, it is interesting to focus on what has grown out of it: the values that define it, and that make it not only a distinct culture but also a space of innovation and artistic freedom. To fully understand the free party, it must be approached simultaneously through its artistic, social, and political dimensions.

First and foremost, it is a musical phenomenon, since these gatherings are places of celebration and dance where “Tekno” was born. In free parties, the music is either mixed or created live: repetitive, darker, and more distorted than what plays in mainstream clubs, breaking away from more commercial forms of techno. The sound is also pushed much louder than in licensed venues, with the explicit aim of drawing dancers into a state of collective trance, sometimes facilitated by the use of drugs.

At the same time, it’s in free parties that numerous musical styles were born, and that later were taken up by the mainstream stage, such as tribe, hardtek, frenchcore, mentalcore, acidcore and more. These events have contributed to renewing the legal electronic scene, offering a first stage for many emerging artists who were able to experiment and perform at the beginning of their careers thanks to this underground setting.

For instance :

The social and political dimension has been central to free parties since their very beginning. They were born as an act of resistance against the authorities’ attempts to shut down techno music, and from the desire to create a non-commercial form of celebration: open to everyone, free of charge, and liberated from capitalist codes. The term “free” reflects both this libertarian ethos and the refusal of commercial and institutional constraints such as nightclubs, official festivals, or ticketing systems. Contrary to what we might think while hearing the name “free” party, these gatherings are not free but based on a donation system at the entrance, allowing visitors to choose the amount of money they give.

Free parties are also tied to the idea of reclaiming public or natural spaces such as warehouses, fields, industrial wastelands, abandoned quarries, and bringing them back to life, if only for a night or a few days. Within these spaces, free parties are like temporary micro-societies built on solidarity and mutual aid, where food, water, and blankets are freely shared. The film Sirat offers an interesting glimpse into these values, accompanying travelers across the deserts of Morocco, from one free party to another.

Yet, precisely because of these values of defiance and the potential disturbances they cause, free parties are deeply unpopular with part of public opinion and with authorities, for several reasons:

Firstly, one of the main issues for public opinion is noise pollution. The amplified music of the sound systems is extremely loud, not limited by any legal decibel measures, and even if organizers often try to find places far from residential areas, they can still disturb the population especially during multi-day events.

The second main point is illegal occupation. In western countries, property ownership is a very important value among people, thus illegally taking over private property is widely frowned upon.. Moreover, as repression has intensified in recent years, organizers’ options for venues have narrowed, pushing them at times to use farmland or even protected natural areas. Such choices are controversial not only outside the movement but also within it. The issue resurfaced recently when a free party was held on land ravaged by wildfires just weeks earlier, sparking heated debate even among ravers themselves, and leading the interior minister to pronounce these words we saw earlier.

Finally a big concern of public authority would be drug use: although very common in festivals and even in certain professional circles, drug consumption at free parties is frequently highlighted by authorities as the main justification for sometimes violent crackdowns. Indeed in those parties, drug trafficking is not limited in any way, sometimes leading to dangerous situations and even deaths happening at some big events.

Beyond these critiques, the persistent political and media hostility toward the movement raises broader questions. Could the anti-capitalist, anti-system spirit of these gatherings itself be a main reason behind the repression? In an increasingly authoritarian world grappling with crisis, the very act of challenging the capitalist machine through collective celebration seems to provoke growing unease for western authorities and politics.

Free parties today

The free party movement is still alive today, though it faces an increasing repression. In 2019, Steve Maia Caniço drowned in the Loire River in Nantes during the Fête de la Musique, after police used batons and stun grenades to stop a sound system on the riverbank. In June 2021, a free party in Redon commemorating Steve’s death was met with a militarized police raid: explosive grenades were launched in the middle of the night into a field, a young man lost his hand, and gendarmes were filmed smashing speakers with sledgehammers and axes. Bruno Retailleau’s September 2 remarks thus fit into a broader pattern of violent repression that, in my view, is disproportionate to the potential disturbances these events may cause, and also is denying any cultural dimension.

At the same time, the media generally portray these events in a very negative light, focusing on fines issued or on neighbors annoyed by the noise. Rarely are the artistic performances, the decoration work, the self-management involved, or even the testimonies of the partygoers themselves highlighted.

Authorities are recently trying to copy the Italian model, where in recent years organizers have faced prison sentences and where police violence against ravers has been legitimized. Participants of free parties also face fines around 150 euros for only attending the gatherings. But what solutions remain possible, caught between an uncompromising government and a movement that refuses to stop dancing?

At one point, the idea of providing land for organizers (such as abandoned military zones) was put on the table. But the proposal was quickly abandoned, dismissed by successive governments as an admission of failure in their policy of repression. On the other side, many actors within the free party scene are resistant to the idea of legalization, suspicious of public authorities. At its core, the movement is also defined by its contestatory spirit, drawing meaning precisely from illegality and its anti-system stance. The culture of the free party is difficult to reconcile with legal frameworks.

Still, under mounting repression, some sound systems are experimenting with legal formats that attempt to preserve the values and codes of free parties, while making concessions to survive (examples of the Invaders festival or the Agora festival in Brittany). Every year, a demonstration occurs in the main cities of France called Manifestive, to protest against the increasing violence the movement faces. 

This article, I hope, will give you a more nuanced vision of the events that led to the words pronounced by Bruno Retailleau, who summarizes these events as a gathering of punks and offenders. From the first teknivals of the 1990s to today’s sound systems, the free party has remained a symbol of freedom, solidarity, and resistance. It continues to represent a youth that rejects imposed frameworks and seeks another way to experience celebration and culture. Yet, under growing repression and media stigmatization, the future of this movement remains uncertain. But free party activities keep claiming “you can’ stop a people who are dancing”.

Written by Sebastien Bertignac

Bibliography :

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Queudrus, S. (2002). La free-party:Le corps sous influence, ambiance, lieux et scansions. Ethnologie française, 32(3), 521-527. https://doi.org/10.3917/ethn.023.0521

Regnault, F. (2023, 11 août). Il y a 30 ans, le premier teknival avait lieu près de Beauvais. Oise Hebdo. Repéré à https://www.oisehebdo.fr/2023/08/11/il-y-a-30-ans-le-premier-teknival-avait-lieu-pres-de-beauvais/