INTERVIEW
"All this tension has very little reason to be." While for several weeks, the political class is torn around the issue of the veil in the public space, and while the Senate has just voted to ban religious symbols for parents accompanying school trips, Costa-Gavras, invited Tuesday of Europe 1, lamented the place taken by this subject in the public debate. "The closer we approach elections, the more we talk about the veil," regrets the Franco-Greek director.
"It's sad that France, in an election period, falls into such vulgarity", regrets the one who returns to the cinema on November 6 with his new film, Adults in the Room, a political thriller inspired by the writings of the former -General Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek crisis of 2015. "A few months ago, we did not talk about the veil, and here we only talk about that and it is already victims," he notes. , referring to the attack on a mosque in Bayonne, in which two people were injured. And to warn: "If we continue, it will make other victims".
"The closer we approach elections, the more we talk about the veil, because everyone wants to attract those who are against the veil and make them vote for him," denounces the filmmaker at the microphone of Nathalie Lévy, for whom this sequence is "completely electoral". "It does not look like French culture and Enlightenment France," he says again.
"We are in crisis with secondary things"
For Costa-Gavras, "all this tension has very little reason to be". For if he does not forget to mention the unemployment and poverty that continue to rage in France, he recalls that "the country works quite well (...) compared to other countries".
"It is amazing to see that we are in crisis with secondary things," adds the artist, who also denounces the role of part of the media that "excite people". "The Arab world has become the enemy number one" in France, laments the Franco-Greek.