A fictional TV film will attempt to help people understand what created the unbelievable rioting in France in October 2005. L'Embrasement, or The Blaze, tells the story behind the riots using actors from the neighbourhoods that were hardest hit by the riots.

The film is a thriller and uses stock news footage of the riots, real-life interviews from the time, and black and white flashbacks through the fictional tale. Written and directed by Philippe Triboit and co-written by Marc Herpoux.

It looks at a Belgian journalist called Alex who travels to where the riots began to investigate the electrocution and deaths of two teenagers, the different stories of whether the Police chased them into the electricity substation or not, and why the event began such violence.

According to the story in Yahoo News the film does not take a hard stand or portray events and answers as black and white. Policemen are not shown as evil and the young people are not all heroic figures fighting for the poor and their rights.

The film looks like it will also show the incredible disparity in these poor areas in France, most are a mere thirty minutes from Paris and have sub-standard housing and transport, as well as up to four times the national average of unemployment.

I'm surprised that there hasn't been any feature films made of these events, perhaps this TV film might inspire some tales to be told?