Netflix on a phone (Illustration) – ROMAIN DOUCELIN / SIPA
Justice takes the matter seriously. An investigation was opened after the complaint of a young electrician from Nice, filmed without his knowledge in Nice and described as “bearded” in the film Sentinel, broadcast on Netflix, said the Nice prosecutor on Tuesday. The complainant had lodged a complaint on June 1, for “public incitement to discrimination, to racial hatred”.
The plaintiff, who claims to have been filmed without his knowledge, is also considering a civil action for “exploitation of images for commercial purposes without authorization”.
Shot in 2019 and broadcast in March 2021 on the Netflix platform, the film Sentinel includes a passage in which the heroine of the film, a soldier stationed in Nice, observes through the scope of her rifle two young men greet each other on the Promenade des Anglais.
“Very connoted”
The scene is accompanied in the “audio description” version by the following explanation: “Two young bearded men with backpacks shake hands and separate”.
“It is a very connoted term, especially in this context of surveillance and terrorism”, pointed out his lawyer Me Jean-Pascal Padovani, from Saturday, to 20 minutes. On July 14, 2016, a 31-year-old Tunisian, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, left 86 dead and more than 400 injured by rushing into the crowd on the Nice seafront at the wheel of a truck.
Netflix, targeted by the complaint as a broadcaster, has since modified the audio description of its film to remove this term “bearded”. Contacted by 20 minutes, the communication department of the platform in France did not follow up.