Cas agreed, the film BAC North will not have received any Caesar. Nothing for Cédric Jimenez who directed the film, nothing for Gilles Lellouche who competed in the category of best actor, nothing for François Civil nominated for a supporting role. BAC North was named seven times at the beginning of the ceremony. BAC North left empty-handed. No one is surprised. It is not a coincidence.
When it was released last August, the newspaper Release, which is the parish bulletin for people of culture in France, had spoken of a “demago and virilist” film. BAC North « is not just fascist. Trending fifty shades of the right, he unfolds the full spectrum, in a faithful portrait of his country: not of its reality, but of the discourse that describes it wherever the police speak to you”.
Ideological criteria
Mass was said. Freed gave it the. There was no question of awarding a film that shows a reality contrary to the doxa. The doxa requires a catechism: insecurity is a plague, but it is a consequence of poverty; immigration creates this insecurity, but neighborhood children are victims; the creolization of the suburbs is a richness; the news channels give a distorted image of reality, they talk about drug dealers, they forget the energy, the diversity, the youth that crosses the life of these neighborhoods. This is what it would have been necessary to say to the voters of the Academy so that they reward a film which answered their ideological criteria.
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I bet that the people of the cinema liked BAC North. I’m betting that they weren’t bored for a second, that they liked this story, that they discovered Gilles Lellouche like they had never seen him in another film, that they loved it as they say François Civil, Karim Leklou or Kenza Fortas. I bet they liked the chase scenes, the action scenes and the hair-raising ones of opposition between cops and thugs in the city. But reward BAC North was impossible in their eyes. BAC North is a documentary. BAC North reports a truth: the link between immigration and violence, the link between immigration and insecurity, the link between immigration and drugs. These links that are part of the film – but not the whole film! –, these links cannot be endorsed by the Academy.
There is a ready-to-think that irrigates all the arts in France. Woe to those who deviate from the line. The iconoclasts raze the walls or live in hiding.
Cinema people, but also writers, singers, musicians and more generally artists, do not shine by their non-conformism, nor by their originality, nor by their courage lately. There is a ready-to-think that irrigates all the arts in France. Woe to those who deviate from the line. The iconoclasts raze the walls or live in hiding. In any case, they do not sweep the prizes.
The theater release BAC North is a miracle in 2022 production. The film exceeded two million admissions in 2021. It is ranked among the top ten films that have made the most admissions in the past year. The public has decided. The Academy rejected. Call it a lost illusion.