In an interview with Télérama, Algerian actress Shirine Boutella returned to the harassment she has suffered online since the launch of the Netflix series Christmas Flow last November.
In Christmas Flow, she plays a feminist journalist who falls under the spell of a rapper (Tayc) accused of making sexist remarks in one of his songs. All in a French Christmas atmosphere. These are all things that are blamed on Shirine Boutella, as she explains in an interview given to Telerama :
“[ …] because there were kissing scenes. I received a tsunami of hate messages, insults, degrading words… It was horrible. An Algerian rapper I didn’t know existed appealed against me via social media. He took screenshots of the series saying that I did not represent Algerian society, and called on people to come and let off steam on me.“
After a first wave of harassment at the end of November, the young actress is forced to put her Instagram account in private mode, “to have a little respite“. Well aware that this was going to create controversy -“the themes of love, of women, the demonstration of affection in public, all this is still taboo in Algeria“- Shirine Boutella did not hesitate to accept this role, which marks her second collaboration with Netflix after Lupine.
If the young woman was afraid of being attacked on her return to Algeria during the filming of a series with Melha Bedia, she still retains this positive point:
“I looked down when I heard about Christmas Flow, but in the end people were overwhelmingly positive. I even received messages from young Algerian women thanking me for representing this minority of free and independent women, which also exists in our country.s. “
In any case, Shirine Boutella is not at her first attempt. Influencer before becoming an actress, the general public discovered her in 2019 in the excellent Papicha, a shock film on Algerian fundamentalism which had stirred up a wave of indignation in the country.
Our rom-com quiz with the two actors of the series: