The sequence had toured social networks, and set the tone for discussions around the film.
At a press conference after the screening of Bac Nord at the Cannes festival, journalist Fiachra Gibbons apostrophied the film crew on the message conveyed, according to him, by the feature film:
"I saw that and I said to myself. : “Maybe I'll vote Le Pen after that.
The townspeople are in fact nothing but beasts.
The film is great, but there is a problem there.
It's an election year. ”
Nervous laughter on the side of Cédric Jimenez and his team, who seemed to say the least taken aback by the remark.
Read alsoSecurity: behind the popular success of
LAC north
, a political challenge
Since its release on August 18, carried by more than two million admissions, the film has taken on a political dimension. If a part of the left has denounced the Manichean side of the film, the whole of the right and the extreme right seems to have seen in it a realistic fresco of life in the cities.
“The reality is this film! Go see him ! Become aware of this terrible reality and the urgency to regain control, ”
had tweeted Marine Le Pen.
This recovery by the extreme right, Cédric Jimenez did
not "live well"
, "
hated
" even.
“I don't agree with them at all, I don't want to be associated with them.
They do not represent our values.
I don't want
Bac Nord to
serve their pseudo-security campaign
,
”
the filmmaker assured France Inter a few days ago.
"I do not vote on the right"
The film follows three police officers from the Anti-Crime Brigade assigned to the northern districts of Marseille. Feeling little supported by their hierarchy and faced with the violence of their daily lives, these cops cross the red line and plunge into illegality to fight against drug trafficking. The feature film is loosely based on a similar case that hit the headlines in 2012, and recently judged.
In an interview published in
Le Parisien
, Cédric Jimenez assures us that he did not want to make a documentary.
“The political recovery is deplorable and, unfortunately, we suffer it. Zemmour and Le Pen distort the purpose of the film, they make lamentable shortcuts. I did not do an X-ray of the northern districts of Marseille, I showed the city in a very particular context
,
”
he defends himself.
Originally from the Phocaean city, he claims to be politically opposed to the ideas that his film would convey.
“The criticisms I accept them.
I do not vote on the right, my mother worked all her life at CAF, we do not do more on the left ... But journalists have the right to see things that I did not want to convey "
, pleads the director.
He adds that he "
chose to make a film from the point of view of these three cops at the BAC."
What I wanted to tell is how individuals found themselves crushed by the machine, ”
he still confides.
The police liked it
The director also spoke with the three police officers who inspired the film.
He had already consulted them when writing the screenplay, and had also invited them to the film set.
He assures the
Parisian
that they
“liked the film
”
.
“
They never asked me not to write this or that.
They understood from the start that
Bac Nord
is not 100% of their story and that the three characters do not exactly match them.
But they found that the film captured well what they had been through and the betrayal of their hierarchy. "
