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A lawyer representing a man accused of carrying out a foiled terrorist attack has spoken out against a film by Clint Eastwood depicting the incident.
The film, The 15-17 to Paris, is based on events onboard an express train in France when a gunman tried to attack passengers in August 2015.
On that day three American friends famously thwarted the attack on the Paris-bound train from Amsterdam by tackling Ayoub El-Khazzani, a man who authorities said has ties to radical Islam.
They said El-Khazzani boarded the train with a Kalashnikov rifle, pistol and box cutter — in a story tailor-made for Eastwood's fascination with real-life modern heroes.
El-Khazzani;s lawyer Sarah Mauger-Poliak asked for screenings of the film to be suspended while a judge reviews evidence.
She said the film was a violation of her client's rights because it presented a "fictionalised" and "one-sided" view to the public as fact.
"When Hollywood presents its version of the truth before the judicial system can, that is annoying, to say the least," Ms Mauger-Poliak told France Inter.
"The making of a film based on real events is, by its very nature, likely to be incompatible with the search for truth."
Eastwood asked childhood friends Anthony Sadler, former US Air Force Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone and former Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos to portray themselves in the film.
"He just sprung it on us," Stone said.
"We said yes right away," Skarlatos added. "Then the doubt started creeping in and we asked for the night to think about it."
They ultimately said yes and three weeks later — after having an acting class request denied from Eastwood himself as he did not want them to look like they were acting — cameras were rolling.
Re-creating the event itself was not traumatic as much as it was surreal — production had found or made replicas of the clothes they had worn that day.
"It was a lot of fun honestly. We don't really look at is as a traumatic thing because no-one died," Stone said.
"It's done such positive things for our lives and given us such good perspective on things too."
Sadler said it was like a reunion and Skarlatos added that it felt like closure.
"It's kind of great feeling, like we're finally putting it behind us in a way," he said.
Eastwood also brought in Mark Moogalian, the first man who tried to take down El-Khazzani and was shot in the neck, to play himself in the film.
ABC/wires
Topics: film-movies, terrorism, france, united-states
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