this spectacular French action film caused controversy during its presentation at Cannes

North Baca controversial action film

After a postponement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the second confinement of 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 is a crime thriller which follows the fate of three cops, members of the BAC Nord de Marseille. These, Grégory (Gilles Lellouche), Yassine (Karim Leklou) and Antoine (François Civil) will, under pressure from the police institution which needs results, use illegal methods to achieve their ends. Obtaining the desired results but let down 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 pursued. Ultra-spectacular, North Bac is a realistic and very nervous action film like we rarely see in French cinema, fully assuming its American influences. Highly anticipated and a priori promised success, Bac Nord will however experience a very complicated start to its career. Indeed, during the press conference following its presentation in Cannes on July 12, 2021the intervention of an Irish journalist and the reaction of the film crew created 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. He then declares:

We are in an election year. I saw this with the eye of an outsider and I said to myself: maybe I will vote for Le Pen after that. (…) It’s 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 reimposed. The film is great, but there is still a problem there. We are in an election year. And I was embarrassed. Really embarrassed. And I wasn’t the only one.

Because he is thus the first to intervene, and because he immediately raises the question of the potential political significance of the film, the journalist lights a fire at the same time as he unsettles the film crew. Gilles Lellouche first laughs at the journalist’s comments, before Cédric Jimenez refutes the idea that his film could denounce a certain population or stir up anger. Following him, Gilles Lellouche insists on the fact 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 ill-intentioned, he repeated on several occasions how much he found Bac Nord “great“, the fuse is nevertheless 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, a little less than two months after the release and success of North Bac in theaters – it will end its run with more than 2.2 million of tickets sold – Cédric Jimenez then denounces on the microphone of France Inter “a pure political recovery“. And 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, he interprets the film in the wrong way. That’s all he has to say? It’s absurd. This gentleman is not serious. They are using this movie to say terrible things, which I more than agree with. (…) When you are a candidate for the presidency of the Republic, you do not take a film as an example. It’s not serious, we’re presenting a program. Especially by putting values ​​on the film that it does not represent.

North Bac arrives on the Netflix platform on May 7, 2024.