Kerala Story - film stopped, police called.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.lemauricien.com/actualit...toppee/560878/

Une polémique a éclaté après la projection du film Kerala Story. Sa projection a été stoppée samedi, après l’intervention de la police.
« Nous avons retiré le film pour la sécurité de nos clients et de notre staff », explique le directeur de Mciné.
Le film Kerala Story est sorti dans les salles vendredi 19 mai dernier. Lors d’une des séances le lendemain, un groupe de personnes a fait irruption dans les locaux du Mciné de Trianon et a menacé les employés, selon la direction. Il a fallu l’intervention de la police pour calmer les esprits.
Toutefois, le directeur fait ressortir que toute cette polémique a fait un marketing gratuit pour ce film, « nous avons des appels tous les jours de ceux qui veulent voir le film et nous demandent de le diffuser », lance-t-il, avant d’ajouter, « nous avons obtenu le feu vert du film classification board ».

There was a disruptive crowd for the movie Kerala Story at the Mciné theatre. Police were called and the movie was stopped for reasons of public safety.

The film directory says this is great publicity, he's getting calls every day from people who want to see it now.

[Leo Enticknap]

The article states that a group of people entered the theater and threatened employees, but it doesn't say what with, and to what end. Presumably they did not want the movie to be played. The film's Wikipedia article, however, gives us some clues as to what their motivation might have been:

The Kerala Story is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. It stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani. The plot follows a fictional storyline of a group of women from Kerala who are coerced into converting to Islam and join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Marketed as a true story, the film is premised on the Hindutva conspiracy theory of "love jihad", and falsely claims that as many as 32,000 women from Kerala have been converted to Islam and joined ISIS.

The Kerala Story was theatrically released on 5 May 2023, and become the second highest grossing Hindi film of 2023. Film critics accorded it overwhelmingly negative reviews, characterizing the work as Islamophobic propaganda. The Kerala Story was heavily promoted by the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leveraged the film in its campaigning for the Karnataka assembly election, which it eventually lost. The film has also faced protracted litigation and protests, primarily in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Indian National Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have also accused the filmmakers of defaming Kerala and promoting the agenda of the Sangh Parivar.

Given that 17.3% of the population of Mauritius are Muslims, it doesn't surprise me that something kicked off when this movie was released. If I were a theater manager in that community, I would give this movie a wide berth. If you're running a place of entertainment, you don't want it acquiring a reputation as being somewhere that violent conflict takes place.