Welcome to New York

Welcome to New York  (Film)
Type	Fiction
Publication date	2014
Author(s)	• Abel Ferrara • Christ Zois • Vincent Maraval
Subjects	Dominique Strauss-Kahn,  Anne Sinclair
Movie suppressed from mainstream distribution by the influence of billionaire deep state operative Anne Sinclair

Welcome to New York is a 2014 French-American drama film co-written and directed by Abel Ferrara, inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair when the prominent French politician was accused of sexual assaulting a hotel maid. The film gives a very unflattering description of the action and motives of the power couple Strauss-Kahn and his then wife, billionaire art heiress Anne Sinclair.

Synopsis

The film tells the story of George Devereaux, a powerful man and possible candidate for the Presidency of France, who lives a life of debauchery and is arrested after being accused of raping a maid at his hotel. The first part of the movie lingers on his sex parties, Then it realistically shows the arrest, courtroom procedures and prison, before he is released pre-trial to house arrest in a $60,000 a month apartment. His wife then berates him that by being arrested he destroyed both her political plans and the plans she had for him. In the end we get to know he is acquitted, with the movie skipping the trial itself.

The film does not pay much attention to the political conspiracy theory, according to which Strauss-Kahn was entrapped.

Censorship

Producer Vincent Maraval has claimed that the French political and media “elite” had done their best to prevent the film, which has Gérard Depardieu in the lead role, being made.

“No French television station wanted to finance the film,” he stated, adding that the £1.8m budget was in the end stumped up by his company, Wild Bunch, the City of New York, and three private investors. Depardieu did the job for free.

“Everyone, our friends and our enemies, advised us against making the film,” Maraval said. He also said that he was warned by Dan Franck, a friend of Strauss-Kahn and of his heiress wife Anne Sinclair, at a private dinner. He said Mr Franck told him: “You should know one thing. Anne Sinclair will spend her entire fortune on destroying your life.”

The film’s producers decided to bypass theatrical release – and avoid what they term “self-censorship” by French TV channels who refuse to air the movie – by releasing it on video on-demand platforms. The film was released on 17 May 2014 on the Internet as the film failed to secure a place on the Official Selection at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival (where it was given a special market screening), nor was it picked up for theatrical distribution in France.

Anne Sinclair lambasted Abel Ferrara's film. Expressing her “disgust”, she nevertheless announced that she would not take legal action against the director and the producer: “I don't attack filth, I vomit [on] it”.

On May 19, 2014, Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced that he was filing a complaint for defamation. His lawyer also complained that the film's portrayal of Anne Sinclair was anti-Semitic. The film suggests Mrs. Deveraux's family profited from World War II. The official narrative is that Sinclair's real family were French Jews who fled the country and had their property confiscated when Germany invaded.

When Mrs. Devereux was notified by phone of her husband's arrest, she was in the middle of a dinner party where she was being thanked for "her devotion and love for the state of Israel".

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