From Blanche Gardin to Jamel Debbouze, how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tearing the world of culture apart

Published on May 11, 2025 at 5:02 p.m. , updated on May 11, 2025 at 5:24 p.m.

Comedians Blanche Gardin and Jamel Debbouze. EDITED BY LOLA HALIFA-LEGRAND-SYSPEO/SIPA-SIPA FOR "LE NOUVEL OBS"

Subscribing allows you to gift articles to your loved ones. And that's not all: you can view and comment on them.

Reading time: 5 min.

Subscriber

Investigation Calls for boycotts, attempts at censorship... Since October 7, 2023, the world of culture has been hit hard by the importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into France.

To go further

In the middle of February, director Tristan Séguéla is anxiously scanning social media. His film, "Mercato," starring Jamel Debbouze , is only out in a few days, but it's already making waves. The press is promising the feature film a golden future in theaters, from "Le Parisien," which hails "a breathtaking thriller about the behind-the-scenes of football," to "Télérama," which praises "a truly fantastic Jamel in an incredibly well-constructed film." But on TikTok, X, and YouTube, another scenario is beginning to emerge. Calls for a boycott are popping up here and there, for a completely different subject than that of the film: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . An Arab-Muslim sphere reproaches the main actor for his "cathedral silence" on the massacres in Gaza , in the words of the YouTuber Herts, when it is not the "Zionist" producer Alain Goldman who is targeted by the site EuroPalestine.com, or even the director and screenwriter, "Tristan Séguéla, the son of the famous publicist Jacques Séguéla, former communications officer of the ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehoud Barak, and Thomas Finkielkraut, son of the racist philosopher Alain Finkielkraut."

At the cinema, the film ended up being a near industrial disaster: barely 200,000 admissions in the first two weeks... for a budget of 13 million euros. Within the production team, they refused to explain this failure by the smear campaign, but We sigh with disappointment: "We were not aware of the rejection that Jamel was arousing on social networks in relation to Gaza. "Mercato" is a film with Arab and black actors who play...

Article reserved for subscribers.

Want to read more?

All our articles in full from €1