Almost every year, the holding of the Angoulême International Comics Festival (FIBD) is accompanied by a controversy: the Vivès affair in 2023, the spicy report of the Regional Chamber of Accounts in 2022, the sling Authors in 2021 or the Boycott threat of publishers in 2016.
This year, the pavement in the pond is launched by “Humanity Magazine”. Thursday – a week for day before 52e Edition-, the opinion journal published 6 pages under the title “Big Sous and Mail-Being: Angoulême, a festival in full drift”. The file, presented as a “survey of several months”, points to the “commercial turn” and the “toxic management” of the private organizer of the event, the company 9e Art+, and its general delegate Franck Bondoux.
The organizer disputes
The testimonies collected are all anonymous. The most edifying is that of a former employee, dismissed after having denounced a rape which she would have been a victim one night during the 2024 edition. Let us specify that the Angoulême prosecutor’s office, interviewed by “Sud Ouest”, indicates that he is not being Seized of such facts “at this stage, checks made on the basis of very fragmented elements”.
The other stories reported by “Humanity Magazine” share “suffering at work” in a climate of “perpetual crisis”. There is also talk of the waltz of artistic directors and “need for immediate profitability”. The newspaper also wonders about the recent partnership established with the Quick fast food chain, a symbol of “mercantile orientations”.
Franck Bondoux sweeps these allegations. Pressed, he refers to the reading of a press release released on Friday afternoon. Extracts: “We do not intend to let our event be destabilized by such unfounded attacks. […] Partnerships allow […] to diversify sources of financing in a context where public funds can no longer be called. Critics […] Do not question the investment of our teams and the quality of our festival which remains an event of global dimension. »»
-The controversy falls badly
The organizer of the FIBD also says to refute “with the greatest firmness” the accusations brought by one of his “former collaborators” and says he is “determined to provide all the testimonies demonstrating that at no time do the organization of the company has not failed in its obligations ”.
At the end of the press release, 9e Art+ calls for a 2025 edition “in all serenity, at the service of culture”. The fact remains that the controversy falls badly, a few months from the examination of the renewal of the agreement which grants it the management of the FIBD. Elected officials in Angoulême would like it to be denounced and renegotiated. This was the case almost ten years ago, in a tense context, under the aegis of a mediator of the Ministry of Culture.
For the time being, Delphine Groux, president of the founding association of FIBD, supports Franck Bondoux and her team. She did not like the “sensationalism” of the file of “Humanity Magazine”.
