Netflix movie 'Guapis' on trial in Texas for "child pornography"

The grand jury of Tyler (Texas), a county of about 20,000 inhabitants 150 kilometers east of Dallas, has opened a legal proceeding, after accepting the prosecutor's request, against the

Netflix

platform

for the film

, by Maïmouna Doucouré , originally titled as

and in English-speaking countries as

.

A spokeswoman for the platform has stated that "this accusation is unfounded" and that the feature film is "a social chronicle against the sexualization of young girls."

• Girls perrean: the truth about the preventive lynching of 'Cuties'

The indictment, filed on September 23, indicates that the film "lacks real literary, artistic, political or scientific value", which means that it is not protected by freedom of expression and accuses Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings, for the distribution of obscene material.

The case will be led by prosecutor Lucas Babin, son of Republican congressman Brian Babin, who presented a letter to the United States attorney general along with some thirty legislators calling

"child pornography" and requested that its distribution in the United States cease.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has also joined the request.

Curiously, Babin is a former model and actor: he played the musician Spider in

(2003), and his television roles include Rocky in

Netflix's "Cuties" clearly meets the US legal definition of child pornography.

It's disturbing to see a mainstream media company promoting the sexualization of children - it shouldn't be allowed.

I'm requesting AG Barr bring charges against @netflix for distributing this film.

pic.twitter.com/DQW1Kc2Jxu

- Brian Babin (@RepBrianBabin) September 18, 2020

The film tells the story of Amy, an 11-year-old immigrant from Senegal who lives with her family in the suburbs of Paris.

Caught between the traditionalism of her family life and exclusion from French society, she joins a dance group that mimics steps and movements of much older girls they see on social media in an attempt to gain acceptance.

The film premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where Doucuré won the award for best director in the World Cinema section, and later competed in the Generation Kplus section of the Berlinale, a section focused on portraits of childhood in a festival, the German, marked by the social.

The film had already generated controversy in social networks before its premiere in September on Netflix, with a crowd of users accusing the platform of promoting pedophilia and calling to cancel their subscriptions only after seeing the advertising poster, without being yet to users' disposition of the film.

The French Minister of Culture, Roselyn Bachelot, has defended

and denounced the criticisms as "based on a series of images taken out of context" while the director qualifies this misinterpretation as "totally contrary to the purpose of my work".