The first trail­er for Young Ahmed courts controversy

Cannes Film Fes­ti­val hasn’t even announced all of their films, and already they’ve begun gen­er­at­ing the annu­al con­tro­ver­sy. This year, the Dar­d­enne broth­ers are tak­ing a turn in the hot seat.

Their new film Young Ahmed (the trail­er for which appeared online this morn­ing, regret­tably with­out Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) revolves around a 13-year-old stu­dent and prac­tic­ing Mus­lim. The pro­vid­ed syn­op­sis describes the char­ac­ter as ​“caught between his imam’s ideals of puri­ty and life’s temp­ta­tions,” and asks, ​“How can love of life win out over his desire to put some­one to death?”

That’s the distributor’s rather cryp­tic way of out­lin­ing a plot in which Ahmed grows rad­i­cal­ized and plots to mur­der his school­teacher. Racial ten­sions in France being as frag­ile as they are, even the sug­ges­tion of the film’s con­tent has raised a teapot-sized tempest.

While lim­it­ed to only the most plugged-in cinephiles, there was a bit of online push­back to the broad con­tours of this premise. A small but ardent con­tin­gent expressed con­cern that a pair of white Bel­gians may not be so well-attuned to the polit­i­cal thorni­ness of present-day Islam in the West.

A sec­ond fac­tion then pushed back against that push­back, not­ing the human­ist streak that has always coursed through a fil­mog­ra­phy fix­at­ed on ideas of for­give­ness. The counter was that it’s good form to reserve judge­ment until the film in ques­tion has actu­al­ly been seen.

As dus­tups between movie nerds go, it was rather minor, but it’ll be a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion again next month when the Dar­d­ennes make their big pre­mière on the Croisette. It wasn’t so long ago that pro­gram­mer Thier­ry Fre­maux was scared off by Noc­tura­ma, anoth­er movie about ter­ror­ism in France; some­thing must have changed his way of think­ing between then and now.

The Cannes Film Fes­ti­val will take place from 14 May to 25 May.