Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri 10:39 a.m., April 13, 2022

Canal+ broadcasts the documentary "Pas de bras, pas de cinema?", which questions the place of disability in film and that of disabled professionals in the world of cinema.

Its director Julien Richard Thompson explains at the microphone of Europe 1 why this subject, which affects him personally, remains relevant.

No arms, no cinema?

Beyond the reference to the cult line of

Intouchables

, the question seriously arises: what is the place of people with disabilities in the world of cinema, in front of and behind the camera?

This is therefore this formula that the director Julien Richard Thompson as the title of his new documentary, broadcast on Canal +.

From

Freaks

to

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

, via

Rain Man

,

 Forest Gump

or

The Aries Family

, many films feature people with disabilities. 

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10 years to create 

Intouchables

But the road to inclusiveness is still long, according to Julien Richard Thompson.

"I myself have a disability, since I have a somewhat strange disability called Gilles de la Tourette syndrome", he confides at the microphone of Europe 1. "It made me d "else posed a lot of worries in my career. It was on the basis of this observation that I got involved in various actions."

"Cinema is a look at the world and at the world we would like to build. So cinema must talk about disability, because people with disabilities are very numerous in France, around 12% of the population", recalls -he.

"And they appear little on the screens, and even less in the cinema teams."

His documentary reaches out to directors like Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, who tell us about the difficulty of bringing to fruition a feature film that evokes disability.

The film

Intouchables

with Omar Sy and François Cluzet, for example, took 10 years to be developed, due to a lack of producers and therefore of funding.

Disabled actors for disabled characters?

This report also gives voice to actors with Down syndrome, deaf or small.

By explaining to us how complicated it is already for them to find roles, some are offended to see able-bodied actors playing disabled characters.

"It doesn't necessarily shock me that an able-bodied actor or actress plays a character with a disability," explains Julien Richard Thompson.

"But then it would also sometimes have to be the other way around: that we put disabled characters in stories that have nothing to do with the disability. And that we also give disabled actors characters valid.

“When someone is sitting behind a desk or a counter, we don't know if the person is in a wheelchair or not,” he takes as an example.

"It has to go both ways and that people with disabilities are treated like everyone else. So we have to educate screenwriters and directors."

The documentary

Pas de bras, pas de cinema?

 can be seen on the MyCanal platform.

It is also broadcast Wednesday at noon on Ciné+ Émotions.