PARIS — The French Culture Ministry ruled Wednesday that a new documentary film on Islamic radicals was unsuitable for minors, saying that it offered images of violence that were “sometimes unbearable” and interviews with members of Al Qaeda and other extremist figures that provided a platform for propaganda.
The documentary, “Salafistes,” will also be accompanied by a warning about the nature of its contents. It shows one leader of the Salafists, who practice a fundamentalist form of Islam, expressing support for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and another justifying the amputation of hands as a punishment under Sharia, the legal code of Islam. They also speak freely about their opinions on the inferiority of women.
The decision to restrict a movie to those 18 and over is usually reserved for films with pornographic content or extremely violent scenes, and is very rare for documentaries in France, which has been grappling with how to balance freedom of speech and expression with national security after a series of deadly attacks last year. This month, the distributors of “Made in France,” a film about fictional homegrown jihadists, decided to cancel its release in theaters, citing security concerns.
“Salafistes,” co-directed by François Margolin and Lemine Ould Salem, a journalist from Mauritania, stirred controversy last week, when it was to be screened at the FIPA festival in Biarritz in southwestern France. Just before the first screening the National Center of Cinematography, which gives out movie ratings, called the festival to say that the documentary was “degrading human dignity” because it showed images of a police officer killed in the attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo last year. In response, the festival restricted the screening only to those with credentials, such as reviewers and journalists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/world/europe/france-restricts-salafistes-film-on-islamic-radicals.html?ref=world
