Members of a film crew working on the latest movie from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron were left bloodied and bruised after an altercation with officials in Mexico City, authorities said.
The Gravity film-maker is making a movie about the life of a middle-class family in the early 1970s in his home country of Mexico.
The dispute involved private security staff apparently hired by the film crew, who had taped off parts of some streets, either for filming or support vehicles.
Alfonso Cuaron (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
The city prosecutor’s office said they had permission from a federal film board to do so. But officials from the borough of Cuauhtemoc — which covers the central area — arrived and said they had not been notified.
The officials began to collect and confiscate the traffic cones the crew was using to rope off space. The security crew tried to stop them, displaying the permit, but borough officials said that permits were needed and that street closures for filming had become a problem in the central area.
Alfonso Cuaron (Jordan Strauss/AP)
City police said “after an exchange of words, there was an altercation, with no injuries reported”.
But city prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the dispute, because “the victims were the subject of verbal and physical aggressions, and some of them had personal possessions taken”.
In a statement, the film company Espectaculos Filmicos El Coyul distributed copies of permits issued by the city’s film board, as well as photographs showing at least three men with head wounds apparently caused by blows. The company did not say whether the men were members of the crew or security staff.
(Jordan Strauss/AP)
“This wasn’t an ‘altercation’ as some authorities have reported, it was an attack,” the company said. “And there were people injured: two women were hit, and five members of our team had to be taken to a hospital, and wallets, cellphones and jewellery were stolen.”
In a video posted by borough president Ricardo Monreal at the time of the incident — but which does not show the altercation — Monreal complains about the crew’s activities.
“Even though they’re filming, they are conducting commercial activities, and affecting the neighbours,” he said, adding: “They act with arrogance, with security guards, and close off streets … you can’t do that any more.”
(Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
The film company said the borough administration had promised to repair the damages, return the property and punish those responsible.
The crew apparently fell afoul of a new trend in activist borough government trying to clear traffic-clogged streets of chains, ropes and traffic cones that businesses and parking attendants often use to rope off space.
Some borough officials have become impromptu stars of social media sites by posting videos of these crusading “take back the streets” efforts, but there have been rights complaints about the campaigns before.
Cuaron won Oscars for best director and best film editing in 2014 for Gravity, which starred Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. He also directed Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.
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