A number of social media accounts, many of them based in India, have been sharing a video that they claim shows a group of young French women beating up “migrants” who tried to harass them in the street. It turns out, however, the video shows a staged fight scene featuring students at a French school for stunt performers.
If you only have a minute
- Social media accounts based in both India and the United States have been circulating a video that they claim shows a group of young French women beating up a group of “migrants” who had harassed them in the Parisian metro.
- Turns out, the video actually shows a fight scene staged by students training to be stunt performers at a special centre in France. One of the students in the video is wearing a sweatshirt with the school’s logo on it.
- Our team contacted the school, which confirmed that the video showed a staged fight scene performed by students.
The fact-check, in detail
The footage shows three young women attempting to walk through a group of men in what appears to be a long metro corridor. When the men block their path, the women leap into action. After just a few seconds of flying fists and well-aimed kicks, the girls wipe out the entire group of men, leaving them writhing on the ground.
“This video is so soothing …Yesterday somewhere in Paris on a Metro Underpass ... a few migrants were doing what they do best ... Taharrush (roughly translates to mass molestation of women) ... Unfortunately for these migrants, these 3 women were all serving French para-military [sic],” says a tweet on X (formerly Twitter), posted by an account that claims to be based in Mumbai, India. The video, which was posted on November 15, has since garnered more than 400,000 views.
The video was also circulated on X with a caption in Spanish, which claimed that the men in the video were Muslim. Another account apparently based in India posted the video on Facebook with a caption in English.
A video showing students training to be stunt performers
However, if you zoom in on the photo, you’ll see that one of the men is wearing a sweatshirt with a logo that says “CUC”. We ran a Google search for this acronym and, turns out, the logo belongs to Campus Univers Cascades, a training centre for stunt performers that has been operating in France since 2008.
On November 2, 2023, CUC posted the video on its official Instagram profile along with the caption “street fight” and hashtags “cinema” et “choregraphy (sic)”.
Our team contacted Campus Univers Cascades, who told us that the video showed a staged fight scene filmed on October 31 in the corridor of a train station located near their site.
The video shows a choreographed scene performed by our trainees. The idea was a street fight caught on surveillance camera. Everyone who appears in the video is a stunt performer at our centre.
We often film videos to show our work. However, we make sure that one of the stunt people is wearing an item of clothing with our logo on it so that the video isn’t misused.
We are sorry that these videos were taken and misused for the purposes of propaganda.
This isn’t the first time that Indian accounts have shared fake information about the Muslim community.
Read moreUnmasking 'Love Jihad': The dangerous impact of an Indian conspiracy theory
These instances have increased in the wake of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s bloody offensive on Gaza, as we explained in this article.
