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Gang film pulled from French cinemas over Paris attacks

A film about gangs set in the tough Brussels suburb where a jihadi cell planned the Paris terror attacks, has been pulled from French cinemas.

Published: 19 February 2016 17:11 CET

The distributors of “Black”, shot in the Molenbeek area of the Belgian capital made notorious by the November 13th gunmen, told AFP Friday they were forced into the decision because so many cinemas were refusing to show it.

It is the third film handling such sensitive subject matter to have run into trouble in France since the country was rocked by the killings in which 130 people died.

The decision came as a Paris court overturned a decision not to allow anyone under 18 see “Salafists”, a controversial expose of African radical Islam, an almost unheard of restriction on a documentary.

The distributors of “Black” had already been hit by a similar decision by the culture ministry to bar under 16s from seeing their “Romeo and Juliet” style story of forbidden love between members of two rival gangs.

A spokesman for Paname Distribution said “due to the reluctance of cinemas to show 'Black' in the current climate, we took the decision to cancel its cinematic release.”

The trailer of the film

Clashes in cinema

Youths threw stones at police outside a multiplex in Brussels when the film was first screened there in November after gangs of teenagers too young to see it caused trouble after slipping into the cinema using tickets bought for other movies.

“Black” was a hit in Belgium despite some cinemas refusing to show it after the violence and an over-16 certificate which its makers condemned as “unjust” given characters were mostly teenagers.

But now it has suffered the same fate as “Made In France”, a story of homegrown jihadis plotting to bomb Paris which eerily predicted November's bloodshed, whose distributors immediately withdrew it in the aftermath of the attacks.

A furious debate on freedom of speech in France erupted after “Salafists” was slammed with an 18 certificate last month. The director of the acclaimed Holocaust film “Shoah”, Claude Lanzmann, condemned the decision as “shameful censorship”, calling the film” a genuine masterpiece, illuminating daily life under Sharia law in a way that no book or 'expert' on Islam ever has.” 

But judges overturned the decision Thursday allowing anyone over 16 to see it in what its co-director Francois Margolin called a “major victory”.

“They said that we were apologists for terrorism, that we were playing the jihadists' game,” he told AFP.

“But the judges agreed that we were doing exactly the opposite.” 

“Black”, which won an award at the Toronto film festival, centres on a turf war between a Moroccan street gang called “1080”, the postcode for Molenbeek, and their “Black Bronx” rivals from Matonge on the other city of the Belgian capital.

As well Abdelhamid Abaaoud – who lead the attacks on Paris – the run-down suburb was also home to two key suspects still on the run, Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini.

Eleven people have been arrested and charged in Belgium in connection with the killings.

“Black”, which had been due to hit screens on March 19, will now be released online, Paname Distribution told AFP.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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