Breaking the law to help immigrants, a French film sparks controversy

by Alison Hird

Article published on the 2009-03-27 Latest update 2009-03-29 11:23 TU

Vincent Lindon and Firat Ayverdi in Welcome

A new French film, Welcome, skilfully evokes the plight of illegal migrants in and around Calais and the many local volunteers who are breaking the law in trying to help them.

“It’s like our Mexican border,” says French filmmaker Philippe Lioret, describing the location for his latest film. It’s set in Calais where hundreds of illegal migrants continue to flock despite the closing of Sangatte refugee camp in late 2002.

A hard-hitting and unsentimental film, Welcome portrays the lives of refugees trying to reach the UK from France, whatever the price.

It focuses on Bilal, a young Kurd, who, having failed to cross the Channel hidden in a lorry, asks local swimming instructor Simon to train him to swim across.  

A friendship develops and, despite his initial disinterest, Simon comes to appreciate the plight of migrants around Calais and the risks charity workers take in helping them.

The film paints a harsh picture of Calais: barbed wire, police cars and endless sirens. It shows migrants running away from dogs and police with batons. Cold and hungry, they wander about the town, sleeping in a makeshift camp-site known as “the jungle”.

Amid this, pockets of humanity subsist. Charity workers hand out food and blankets and offer what help and moral support they can.

Scandalised by what he’d seen on visits to Calais, Lioret relished the opportunity to bring this complex human drama to a wide audience. But the film has angered the French government.

In an interview given to the Voix du Nord newspaper in which Lioret reportedly drew a parallel between the current raids and arrests of Calais migrants and Jews in 1940s occupied France.

Immigration minister Eric Besson slammedthe filmmaker, saying he found the comparison “unbearable”. In an open letter published in Le Monde Lioret replied that the film is in fact denouncing the “repressive mechanisms” in those two periods, which, he said have “strange similarities”.

His claims have been backed up by Salam, the main Calais charity helping the migrants.

“Not a day goes by without people being beaten or teargas being used,” says Salam’s chairman Jean-Claude Lenoir.

Lioret told RFI he thought Besson was deliberately trying to stir up controversy over the film in order to avoid the real issues.

And one of the real issues for Lioret is the “sinful” law that makes helping an illegal migrant a criminal offence in France.

In the film, police raid Simon’s flat after a racist neighbour reports he’s been sheltering Bilal.

“Even taking a migrant 500m in your car …. can get you up to five years in prison and a 30,000 euro fine,” Lioret explains. “From time to time they bring this clause out and wave it above charity workers’ heads to calm their ardour."

Lioret wants four little words “à des fins lucratives” (for financial purposes) added to article L622-1 of the code des etrangers (Code for foreigners). This would be enough, he explains, to stop local Calais residents from falling into the same category as the passeurs (traffickers) that the 1945 law was originally designed to punish.

Now the opposition Socialist Party has taken up the fight to get the law changed. On 18 March the party organised a screening of the film at the National Assembly followed by a motion to get the “delit de solidarité” (solidarity crime) removed from article L622-1.  The amendment will be voted on at the end of April.

“Yes we must punish those who make money out of misery but no we must not punish solidarity,"says party leader Martine Aubry. "We should even try and develop it.”

It would not be the first time a film has led to a change in the law. In 2006 the war movie Indigènes (Days of Glory), about the discriminatory treatment of French Africans fighting alongside the allies in WWII, pushed then-President Jacques Chirac to bring foreign combatant pensions into line with those of French veterans. 

Welcome is a lot less consensual a film than Indigènes, but the issue could scarcely be more topical.  And the public are voting with their feet - 300,000 people flocked to screenings in the week of its release and it is currently in the top five at the box office.

Watch the film's trailer (in French): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoRqzMGBU4U