The young electrician ended up recognizing himself in the film “Sentinel” (Illustration) – SOPA Images / SIPA
“I saw you in a movie on Netflix. “They say you’re a bearded man. Sucks, looks like you’re a terrorist on it. As he read these words, Rami Sahli fell from his chair. It is indeed through several messages sent by acquaintances that this 22-year-old Niçois learned that he had participated, despite himself, in a film uploaded last March by the video-on-demand platform. , relate
Nice morning.
And the worst thing for this young electrician is that he has been described as a “bearded” in Sentinel, from the name of the French military operation which gives its framework to this feature film signed Julien Leclercq. “It is a very connoted term, especially in this context of surveillance and terrorism”, points out his lawyer. On May 31, after correspondence with the multinational, Me Jean-Pascal Padovani ended up going to court in order to obtain compensation for his client. And a complaint was also filed for “public provocation to discrimination, to racial hatred”, explained the council to 20 minutes, confirming information from the regional daily.
This comment on “two young bearded” appeared in the audio description. Netflix crashed it out. But the damage has been done and the electrician and his friend, who came out of a construction site, are still in the film and the trailer, without ever having given their consent. pic.twitter.com/sTAmT93qlF
– Grégory Leclerc (@GregLeclerc) June 11, 2021
Seen through a soldier’s rifle scope
The image of Rami Sahli would in fact have been captured from afar, in December 2019, when he was leaving a construction site on the Promenade des Anglais. At that moment, he remembers simply saying hello to one of his colleagues before returning home. In the film produced by Labyrinthe Cinéma and Umedia, the sequence appears in the 19th minute as being watched feverishly from the roof terrace of a hotel, through the glasses of the famas of a soldier, the main heroine embodied by the actress Olga Kurylenko.
The electrician is also visible in the trailer. But beyond the use of his image, without his consent, in a film which ranked number 1 when it was released in the United States, which especially shocked the young man and his relatives, it is therefore the use of the term “bearded” in the track “audiodescription” that his lawyer made note by bailiff before Netflix does replace it. “Two young bearded men with backpacks shake hands and separate,” said the voiceover in the footage posted on Twitter by a journalist from Nice morning. Modified, the soundtrack available now evokes two young “men”.
“Just because I am from the Maghreb? “
“I have nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism. The scene is shot at the very spot of the Nice attack. I don’t understand how the director can pass me off as a terrorist. Just because I am from the Maghreb? “, Annoys Rami Sahli, questioned by the regional daily. Until recently, he says he was singled out for it.
Put in default by mail, Netflix would have “kicked in touch”, according to the lawyer Me Jean-Pascal Padovani, after having simply changed the text of the audio description. Contacted by email on Friday afternoon, the communications department of Netflix France had not responded to 20 minutes this Saturday morning.