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The Oscar-winning director of a TV mini-series about survivors of the 2015 terrorist attack at the Bataclan in Paris has rejected accusations his decision to film inside the theatre was “indecent”.
Jean-Xavier de Lestrade said the hostages on whose story the eight-part docudrama was based wanted their terrifying ordeal recreated inside the building and to film it elsewhere would have been “trickery”.
Des Vivants (The Living) was released this week in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the coordinated wave of mass shootings and suicide bombings in the French capital that left 130 people dead and more than 490 injured.
It uses actors to tell the story of seven men and women trying to rebuild their lives after Islamist gunmen held them hostage in the Bataclan. The terrorists forced them to watch as they carried on killing and threatened to shoot them if they moved.
Arthur Dénouveaux, the president of the Life for Paris association that represents many survivors of the attacks, said filming in the theatre had “blurred the lines between fiction and reality” and upset survivors and bereaved families.
“Some people find it indecent to reconstruct the scene of the tragedy where they suffered it and where their loved ones died,” Dénouveaux said.
On Friday 13 November 2015, three gunmen who claimed allegiance to Islamic State entered the Bataclan during a concert by the band Eagles of Death Metal. During their attack, they held 11 concert-goers hostage on a first floor balcony telling them not to move or they would be shot in the head.
Seven of the former hostages have met at least once a month over the past decade and call themselves “les potages” a combination of the French word pote meaning friend and otages for hostages. The Living is based on their personal stories played by actors.
Lestrade, who won an Oscar for best documentary for Murder on a Sunday Morning in 2001 and is an executive producer for the TV series Sin City Law, told the Guardian he had thought long and hard about filming in the Bataclan but had been persuaded it was necessary by the seven survivors.
“I put myself in the place of the victims and asked I would accept making something fictional in this place. It was not an easy choice, but we were telling the precise story of these survivors,” he said.
He said the hostages were among the only survivors to come face to face with the terrorists and have direct, visual, physical and even verbal contact with them.
“We’re making fiction so close to their real accounts that to film elsewhere would be trickery. It would have made no sense,” he said.
“This polemic is surprising and stupid. I can understand some are shocked, but we didn’t make this series for some victims but for everyone. We’re talking about eight minutes out of an eight-hour series. In those few minutes, viewers can be inside the Bataclan, inside this place of horror and tragedy.”
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He said the production team failed to get permission to film inside the theatre and the Bataclan management agreed only after the hostages wrote a joint letter asking for authorisation.
Dénouveaux, who was in the Bataclan pit on the night of the attack and escaped through an emergency exit after helping members of Eagles of Death Metal to safety, said he would not watch the series.
“I don’t want to contaminate my memories with fiction. Those association members who have seen part of it found it well done,” he said.
“It’s important that fiction takes on 13 November, but ultimately, this is a commercial enterprise that aims to get as many views as possible. Let’s not try to pass it off as a selfless work of remembrance or one designed for the victims. We know how to tell our own stories.”
Philippe Duperron, the president of the victims’ association 13onze15, whose son Thomas, 30, was killed in the Bataclan, said bereaved families and survivors had mixed views over the row. He said he had met Lestrade and appreciated his work on Des Vivants.
“If you asked members of the victims’ associations I believe you’d find most are neither scandalised nor revolted,” he said. “Some victims are upset about filming in the Bataclan but if it had been filmed elsewhere others would have been upset.
“Filming there gives me no particular pain or pleasure. I lost my son in the Bataclan. Nothing will change that. It’s difficult but life has to go on.”
