With antisemitism in France escalating since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, a short film portraying a Jewish family grappling with fear will be broadcast on every French TV network ahead of the UEFA Euro Championship Final on July 14, Bastille Day.
Directed by Katia Lewkowicz (“French Dolls”), the short film captures the many ways in which the rise of antisemitic hate incidents has affected the everyday lives of Jews living in France. The film revolves around the Cohen family and shows how each of its members is affected. They begin hiding their Judaism and are compelled to remove their last name everywhere they can, take out the mezuzahs from their door frames, pull the curtains when they gather for Jewish holidays and avoid saying anything suggesting they are Jewish while in public. A friend of the family, who is a young Black French man, witnesses all this with shock and uproar.
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The short film was produced by the agency Marcel under the initiative of Arthur Essebag, a fame TV host and producer, and Maurice Levy, the president of Publicis Group.
Essebag, who runs the banner Satisfaction, said he wanted the film to express the “solitude and fear of French Jews since Oct. 7. Citizens, like this family who are obligated to hide their identity and whose every life has sadly become synonymous with ‘Live hidden if you want to live happily.’
Essebag said the film was “aimed at everyone, from the silent majority to the youngest, for whom fraternity is an essential value of the French Republic.”
The short film was picked up by France Televisions, TF1 and M6, and was broadcast on Bastille Day. It was also released on web platforms and became instantly viral, along with the slogan of the film, “Retrouvons notre #Fraternité.”
The Arc de Triomphe landmark in Paris also paid tribute to it with a line, “Liberté, Egalité,” leaving a blank space in lieu of fraternity (pictured above and below). The Bastille Day timing is charged with symbols as the motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was defined as the essence of the Constitution of 1848, which came about after the French Revolution.
The release of this film in France also coincides with a chaotic political context, which has seen the hard left party La France Insoumise thrive in the snap parliamentary elections in spite of the fact that many of its leaders have been accused of importing tensions related to the war in Gaza and fueling antisemitism. Two days after the terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, which killed over 1200 people, most of whom were civilians, La France Insoumise’s leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, referred to the massacre as an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces.”
During the last quarter of 2023, the number of antisemitic hate incidents increased by 1000% compared with the same period in 2022, and increased further by 300% during the first quarter of 2024, according to data collected by the interior minister. The Israel-Palestine conflict was mentioned in one-third of antisemitic attacks since Oct. 7.
Essebag was also a producer on “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre,” a one-hour documentary chronicling the attack perpetrated by Hamas during the music festival in southern Israel.
