The climax of Beur sur la ville (Djamel Bensalah, 2011) features a squad of policemen dressed in full burqas at a mosque during prayer hours, laying in wait for a killer who may just have a burqa fetish(see Figure 13.1). The ensuing slapstick draws its laughs from the men's voices emerging from behind the veil and from the Keystone cop-style chase, impeded by the long gowns. This very broad comedy might be taken as a kind of burqa-farce, a minstrelsy that lampoons the culture of the performers (the directors, the actors). Given that the film's comedy depends almost entirely upon widely circulating stereotypes about Maghrebi-French and other ethnic minorities, it might be puzzling to some to learn that the film benefitted from a government film fund meant to promote diversity, the ‘Images de la diversité’ (‘Images of Diversity’) fund.

In the wake of the political unrest that shook France in 2005, the government sought creative measures for the recognition and promotion of France's minority communities. Aiming for a ‘better representation of cultural diversity and the promotion of equal opportunity in France,’ the National Agency for Social Cohesion (ACSÉ, L’Agence nationale pour la cohésion sociale) and the National Film and Moving Image Centre (CNC, Centre national de la cinématographie et l’image animée) jointly launched Images de la diversité. The initiative sought to fund projects that contribute to:

• 1) the construction of a common history of the values of the Republic;

• 2) an understanding of the realities of the ‘priority neighbourhoods of France's Urban Policy’ and their inhabitants; an understanding of the realities and expression immigrant populations or those with immigration histories and their integration, as well as the populations of the overseas departments, regions, and collectivities, as well as the valorisation of their memory, history, and cultural patrimony and their ties to France;

• 3) the visibility of the ensemble of populations that make up French society today; and

• 4) the struggle against discrimination on the basis of one's origins or belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race, or a chosen religion. (CNC(b), author's translation)