North Baca controversial action film
After a postponement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the second confinement in October 2020, it was finally at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival that the film North Bac by Cédric Jimenez, is presented, out of competition. Very ambitious in its staging, North Bac it’s a thriller which follows the fate of three policemen, members of the BAC Nord de Marseille. These, Grégory (Gilles Lellouche), Yassine (Karim Leklou) and Antoine (François Civil), under pressure from the police institution that needs results, will use illegal methods to achieve their goals. Having obtained the desired results but disappointed by their hierarchy, they will be arrested by the IGPN and indicted in particular for drug trafficking and racketeering.
After The French AND HHhHCédric Jimenez returns to his hometown to direct this story, inspired by the famous 2012 scandal in which eighteen members of the BAC Nord de Marseille were involved prosecuted. Ultra-spectacular, North Bac it is a realistic and very nervous action film as we rarely see in French cinema, which fully takes on its American influences. Highly anticipated and with a success promised a priori, Bac Nord will however experience a very complicated start to his career. In fact, during the press conference following the presentation in Cannes, the July 12, 2021the intervention of an Irish journalist and the reaction of the film crew sparked controversy.
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A “pro-Marine Le Pen” film?
During this press conference, Irish AFP journalist Fiachra Gibbons was the first to speak. She then declares:
We are in an election year. I saw it with the eye of an outsider and said to myself: maybe later I will vote for Le Pen. (…) It is a vision that we always have in the French media: the areas where we cannot pass, the areas outside of civilization, the areas where French law must be reset. The movie is great, but there’s still a problem. We are in an election year. And I was embarrassed. Really embarrassed. And I wasn’t the only one.
Since he is thus the first to intervene and immediately raises the question of the possible political meaning of the film, the journalist lights a fire and at the same time shocks the film crew. Gilles Lellouche laughs at the journalist’s declarations, before Cédric Jimenez denies the idea that his film could denounce a certain people or foment anger. Following him, Gilles Lellouche insists that it is above all a fiction, a cinema, a “urban western“. And as such, “this is not reality“.
Although the journalist’s intervention was not malicious, he repeated what he had discovered several times Bac Nord “fantastic“, the fuse is still lit and Cédric Jimenez’s film will thus be used by several far-right personalities such as Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour to serve their ideology.
Cédric Jimenez steps up to the plate
On October 9, 2021, just under two months since the release and success of North Bac in theaters – will end its run with more than 2.2 million of tickets sold – Cédric Jimenez then reports at the microphone of France Inter “a pure political recoveryAnd he distances himself from far-right speeches.
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 (…) Éric Zemmour sets a bad example, interprets the film in the wrong way. Is that all he has to say? Is absurd. This gentleman is not serious. They are using this movie to say terrible things, which I more than agree with. (…) When you run for President of the Republic you don’t take a film as an example. It’s not serious, let’s present a program. Above all, giving the film values that it does not represent.
North Bac arrives on the Netflix platform on May 7, 2024.
Source: Cine Serie
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