Fact Check: Staged video of 3 stuntwomen fighting group of men shared with communal spin

Hyderabad: A video showing three women fighting a group of boys in an underpass is going viral on social media. Those sharing the video are indirectly claiming that the girls were molested in Paris by Muslim migrants. The social media users also claimed that the girls in the video are serving French para-military personnel.

An X user shared the video with the caption, “Shocking beyond words if true. Europe's downfall is inevitable as predicted by me. Yesterday, somewhere in Paris on a Metro Underpass… This bunch of Piecefool Migrants were doing what they do best... Taharrush (roughly translates to mass molestation of women). Unfortunately for these PieceFools, these 3 women were all serving French para-military personnel. Europe is Ruined... Librandu Commie Wokeshitters have destroyed Europe. (sic)”

Posts claiming the same can be accessed here and here.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video shows a staged fight shot by Campus Univers Cascades (CUC), a stunt team based in France.

While skimming through the comments on the posts, we found several users saying that the video looked scripted, and we also noticed the letters ‘CUC’ on the hoodie of a man in the video.

Taking these cues, we ran a keyword search with ‘CUC fight’ and came across several videos showing fighting tutorials from a Facebook page called Campus Univers Cascades — a France-based stunt group.

A video posted on the Facebook page in 2021 showed a choreographed street fight between female MMA fighters against a few men.

Further, we checked the Instagram page of CUC and found the viral video posted on November 2, 2023. The video was posted with hashtags like #stuntteam #stuntlife and #choreography, which suggested that the fight is staged and does not show a real incident.

The bio of the Instagram page reads, ‘French Stunt Team Stuntmen | Fighters | Performers.’

When contacted by NewsMeter through the mail, CUC also clarified the issue. “This is a video produced with our stunt students as part of a training exercise on the theme of ‘street fight’. The goal is to bring maximum realism to this staging but this is just a stunt and movie! Everything is prepared in advance and everything is choreographed,” the academy said in the mail.

Hence, we conclude that the video is staged and does not show a real incident from Paris.