The filming of the film “Rebel”, released in 2022 and directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, did not take place in Molenbeek without a hitch. “We had to pay for our security there. We had barely started filming and they were already there with Molotov cocktails. The police couldn’t do anything. We were filming in Molenbeek with a lot of equipment, a lot of trucks and a lot of people,” says Bert Hamelinck, CEO of the production company Caviar in the TV show “De afspraak”. VRT.
Read:Adil El Arbil and Bilall Fallah withdraw their film “Rebel” from a festival in Iran
According to him, the police told them that they could not protect them. “People whose identities we don’t really know suddenly arrived with offers of payment. They threatened us with Molotov cocktails and fire bombs. We had a choice: pay or stop filming. […] We were therefore allowed to stay and calm reigned during the rest of the filming,” continues Hamelinck. As a result, the film’s security budget almost tripled from 30,000 euros to more than 80,000 euros.
When presenter Bart Schols asked Hamelinck if those who disrupted their filming were members of the Molenbeek mafia, he replied in the affirmative. “And we are talking about a film by Adil and Bilall, with, in the cast, many actors who come from Molenbeek and who know the region well,” he underlines, deploring “a very complicated filming period” . And to conclude: “We worked there for two to three weeks and it was not easy.”
To read: The secrets of the Moroccan directors of the film “Rebel”
Present on the set, Joris Van Cauter, lawyer specializing in criminal cases, expressed his indignation: “That in Brussels, you have to pay a kind of mafia to be able to work in complete security, it’s unimaginable… It’s absolute failure of the rule of law. It’s because the justice system doesn’t work.”
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