Mission Cinema Denies Reports on Filming Restrictions Amid Terror Threat

The restriction on film shooting in Paris relates only to the usage of police signs, Stephan Guillemet, the director of the film, one scene of which was not allowed for shooting in the city streets, told Sputnik on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — Currently, there are no restrictions on filming movies in Paris, the officer of Mission Cinema of the Paris mayor's office told Sputnik on Friday, refuting false media reports on a ban amid a terror threat.

"There is no restriction now, there is no problem anymore. It was true maybe two weeks ago, just after the events, now it is quite normal," an official of Mission Cinema Paris Film told Sputnik.

On Thursday, the media reported that filming scenes with police or security services is banned in Paris, after recent terror attacks in early January that claimed lives of 17 people. A scene with a police officer outside a school in the film called "Flics Tout Simplement" (Simply Cops) was prohibited from shooting.

"We had to do this scene in a private domain, not in a street of Paris," Stephan Guillemet told Sputnik, explaining that "only one scene with police signs and vehicles [was not allowed]."

The film director claimed that only filming of scenes with police imagery had been restricted, while general filming in Paris continues in its usual manner.

"Actually in Paris many films are shot every day. There are not only action films with police staff in them. So we can work as usual… We should not exaggerate, I think," Guillemet concluded.

According to the media reports, alleged restrictions were necessary because actors in chase scenes might have been mistaken for police officers and become potential targets for terrorists.

It was also reported that a number of previously greenlighted productions had been disrupted due to the fictitious ban.

On January 7, the office of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine was attacked by radicalized Muslims, leaving 12 dead. The next day a female police officer was shot dead by a single gunman in the Paris suburb of Montrouge. The following day, the gunman killed four hostages in a kosher supermarket.

On Wednesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls raised the terror alert level in the southern Alpes-Maritimes department to maximum after a man stabbed three soldiers patrolling near a Jewish community center in Nice.