Fact Check: Video showing cars falling off a building makes a false claim on France riots
A 17-year-old boy was shot in the chest by the police in Paris on June 27, 2023. After this incident, hundreds of protestors took to the streets, demonstrating and rioting opposing the killing.
A 17-year-old boy was shot in the chest by the police in Paris on June 27, 2023. After this incident, hundreds of protestors took to the streets, demonstrating and rioting opposing the killing.
Several videos are in circulation on social media showing the demonstrators resorting to ransacking offices and arson. Amidst this, a video showing cars falling off a building is being shared virally in connection with the protests.
Along with the video, a caption in Hindi reads: “#फ्रांस ने एक #राष्ट्रवादी महि
When translated, it says: “France has elected a secular liberal Macron as president instead of a nationalist woman, see the consequences.”
Fact check:
The claim that the video shows protests in France is false.
When we performed a reverse image search on Google, we found a Facebook post sharing the same video on October 19, 2020, with the caption “This ‘Fast& Furious 8’ scene had no CGI (Via camera setups)”
Taking this as a cue, when we performed a keyword search “Fast and Furious 8 car crash scene”, we found a few YouTube videos posted in 2016 with the title ‘Fast & Furious 8 car crash scene’. The description of the video states that REAL cars are being launched from a garage in downtown Cleveland, OH (filling in for NYC locations).! You just don't see flying cars every day! All rights reserved. Please send me a private message for licensing inquiries.
The video was also shared by a YouTube channel named Movieclips in 2017.
According to an article published in Movieweb.com (June 10, 2016), the stunt was shot in Cleveland, where a number of cars were dropped out of a parking lot from a building.
According to screenrant.com, the production crew gathered real cars and carefully arranged them near the windows of various floors of a parking garage. Each car was placed on a ramp and tied to a weight drop that was set up to release the car with a slight delay in relation to the rest. They then proceeded to release all the weight drops, causing the cars to drop off the edge and onto the motorcade below. Every falling car was aimed at a particular target on the ground and was carefully timed to drop in a sequence that prevented it from obscuring the others. Some of them were dropped from a crane that stood way higher than the parking garage.
Hence, the video showing cars falling from a parking garage is NOT from France, it is a scene shot for the 2017 movie Fast and Furious 8. The claim is false.