A photograph of a group of men riding a police van and brandishing guns, with a French flag on top of it is being shared online with the false claim that the photo is from the unrest in France and shows protestors taking over a police vehicle.
BOOM found that the claims are false, and the photo is a still from a movie called Athena which released in 2022.
The riots in France seem to be slowing down after almost a week of violence by angry protestors following the death of Nahel M, a 17-year-old teenager, was shot dead by a police officer in Nanterre. Nahel's grandmother, Nadia, had called for peace and asked the protestors to cease the violence. "Don't break windows, buses, ...schools. We want to calm things down," she told French news outlet BFM TV in an interview.
The photo of some men atop a police van is being shared in this context with different captions across social media. A caption on Twitter reads, "France welcomed “peaceful” Middle East immigrants into their country. Now, that 9% of the population is wrecking havoc on their cities, even after their Defense Minister deployed 45,000 police in a loose attempt to restore order. Riots have now begun in Italy, Belgium, and the UK. THIS is what is coming here if people don’t wake TF up to the harm of a totally OPEN BORDER!"
Click here to view the tweet.
The image was also included by news outlet OneIndia Hindi in one of their articles about the unrest in France published on July 2 with the headline, 'France riots: Why is there a law allowing people to be shot for breaking traffic rules?'
(Original headline in Hindi: France riots: फ्रांस में ट्रैफिक नियम तोड़ने पर गोली मारने का कानून क्यों बना?)
The photo is also circulating on Facebook.
Click here to view the post.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false and the photo is a still from Athena, a French film that released in 2022 and is currently streaming on Netflix.
A reverse image search of the photo on Google led us to a tweet by American news website Vulture from March 3, 2023. The tweet announced nominations for Vulture's inaugural Stunt Awards including films like RRR and Top Gun: Maverick, and carried a photo similar to the one in our claim.
Athena won the award for Best Stunt In an Action Film, and was nominated under three other categories-- Best Vehicular Stunt, Best Practical Explosion, and Best Overall Action Film.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for stills from Athena on YouTube by using keywords like "athena police van sequence" and found a video shared on September 25, 2022. Uploaded by a channel called DOPE, the video was titled 'ONE OF THE BEST OPENING SCENE OF MOVIES | ATHENA | NETFLIX | 2022.' The still at the 0:30 mark of the video is an exact match to our viral photo.
Here is a comparison between this still and our viral photo:
Athena, directed by Romain Gavras and written by Elias Belkeddar and Ladj Ly, released on Netflix on September 23, 2022. Coincidentally, the film also revolves around themes of police brutality and social inequality as it portrays the killing of a young boy by a police officer. The plot is driven further by the boy's three elder brothers-- an ex-army officer, a drug leader, and a leader of the neighbourhood's youngsters and how each of them try to do justice by their brother. The parallels between Athena and the ongoing situation in France have also been pointed out in this Telegraph article published on July 3.
