France’s directors’ guild, the SRF, and the producers guilds SPI and UPC, have all come out in support of Mehdi Fikri’s family drama After The Fire, about a woman on a quest for justice when her brother dies in police custody, blaming the film’s poor box office and scathing reviews on a far-right campaign they say is putting free speech at risk.
Fikri’s first feature was released in France on November 15 by Bac Films after a world premiere in Toronto’s Discovery section. It has sold just 21,538 tickets after two weeks in theatres with 18,033 in its opening week on 118 screens and just 3,505 on 110 screens the following week, an 81% decline. Although distributor Bac Films and producer Michael Gentile attribute part of the poor performance to a competitive arthouse release period and audiences’ desire for more escapist fare during the Israel-Hamas war, they - and the wider industry- firmly believe the film has been negatively targeted by right-wing activists.
Several conservative media outlets have given the film scathing reviews - Le Point called it “a propaganda film” and Le Parisien “a pamphlet with a vengeance”. The film’s star, popular French singer turned Cesar-winning actress Camelia Jordana, has been subject to intense cyberbullying with hundreds of hateful messages on her social media pages due to her role in and outspoken defence of the film.
After THe Fire had a 1.4/5 rating on popular entertainment website Allocine, considered to be the French equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes, even before the film began playing in theatres, suggesting its ratings were a result of pre-meditative manipulation. It now has a 1.8/5-star user review rating.
The controversy has also shifted the spotlight to user-generated review websites and social media platforms and their impact on a film’s theatrical fate, prompting French cinema guilds to rally behind the film and warn of more global right-wing threats to freedom of expression.
Ahead of the film’s release, the conservative-leaning broadcaster CNews and a slew of social media post identified the film as a biopic about the family of Adama Traoré, who died in police custody in 2016 and have accused the film of being funded by state money (via the CNC) only to be critical of its national police.
Gentile, of Paris-based The Film who produced After The Fire with Topshot Films, calls both accusations “false information” and, along with Fikri, maintains the film is entirely fictional and funded only minimally by state and regional aid.
“The film was meant to bring people together around an intelligent discussion on the need for social justice through the intimate perspective of a family and instead it has done the opposite and incited violence,” said Bac Films’ founder and CEO David Grumbach.
Grumbach says Bac Films plans to pursue talks with Allocine, social media groups and the French government to take action to prevent similar smear campaigns from gaining traction for future films. “It’s a global problem. It’s a real threat to democracy everywhere. We need to act now before it gets worse,” he said.
The exec recalled he experienced a similar backlash for Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties in the US. “I never thought something like that could happen in France, but I was naïve. As soon as a film bothers the far right, they launch a blend of disinformation and attacks to scare people away.”
Allocine CEO Julien Marcel told Radio France last month that he and his staff “were fully aware of a problem” with the ratings for After The Fire and said he “deplores” the fact that the site is being used “to talk about something other than the quality of a film.”
Allocine has now confirmed a series of new accounts were created nearly simultaneously and all of them gave 5/5 ratings to Sound Of Freedom and 0,5/5 (the lowest possible score) to After The Fire and has issued a warning message on the film’s web page calling the ratings “unusual” with a link to a statement explaining its ratings system.
The site has also been at the centre of user-generated box office backlashes around other films including Disney’s The Little Mermaid in May and Father And Son starring Omar Sy in January that both incurred a slew of racist comments.
Industry support
Directors’ guild the SRF issued a statement saying “the far right is attacking culture” and naming specific media including CNews for what it described as “a violent smear campaign” with “intimidation tactics”. It said such media campaigns “undermine the creative freedom of film-makers and the free distribution of their works” and “they are also jeopardising the right to fiction, an essential element of life in a democracy.”
The SRF cited other recent examples of films including Philippe Faucon’s 2016 Amin, about a Senegalese immigrant who falls for a French woman, Lola Quivoron’s motor cross drama Rodéo and Émilie Frèche’s Ina Better World about a family who take in a young illegal migrant, that it claims “have already been subjected to such charges, accompanied by hateful comments attributable to far-right groups.”
Producers’ guilds the SPI and UPC issued a joint statement expressing their “full support” for the film saying it was a victim of what they call “a new form of censorship, which is difficult to identify, but unprecedentedly dangerous.” The groups accuse the backlash of the film of being “propaganda” that “seeks to manipulate opinions and damage the reputation of works with an immediate and irreversible effect on cinema admissions.”
French actors’ organisation the A.D.A publicly denounced the “despicable harassment” against Jordana on social media, saying “extremely violent racist and misogynistic comments are being made about her” and adding “This cannot go on.”
Jordana posted her own lengthy response on Instagram, writing: “If this film and its approach are disturbing, it’s because it says something about our society.”
What next?
After The Fire could be resuscitated in its next windows in France’s media chronology. It is en route to a post-theatrical run on OCS, followed by Netflix and then France 3. It was well-received in Toronto followed by the Rome Film Festival where it earned an honourable mention in the best first feature category, the film could also reach international audiences. Goodfellas is handling global sales with Bac Films.
But Gentile fears other films in France and across Europe could be subject to similar smear campaigns as, he says, “extreme right wing groups are very organised and know how to manipulate social media.”
His upcoming film The Barbarians, set for an autumn 2024 release is a political comedy directed by Julie Delpy about migrants in France and its subject matter could be ripe for right wing backlash.
Grumbach added: “We make films to share emotions and spark debates about social problems. We need to be able to do this peacefully without being scared of being attacked by the far right or the left.”
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