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SBS movie slapped for classification breach

A French thriller screened on SBS TWO has breached the Code of Practice for incorrect classification.

A French thriller screened on SBS TWO has breached the Code of Practice for incorrect classification, by the media watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The 2005 film, 13 Tzameti, was broadcast by SBS at 11.35 pm in January with an M classification and consumer advice of ‘violence, adult themes and coarse language’.

The black and white thriller saw a destitute immigrant worker drawn into a game of Russian roulette, where money was gambled with lives. A complainant likened it to a “snuff movie.”

But the film was classified MA15+ by the Classification Board for ‘strong themes, violence and drug use’.

In its submission to ACMA, SBS acknowledged it had incorrectly classified the film as M rather than MAV 15+ but defended the strong themes as being shown in context.

ACMA ruled that the consumer advice of ‘violence, adult themes and strong language’ by SBS did not reflect the strong impact of the classifiable elements in the film.

SBS has agreed to re-classify the film MAV15+ and provide appropriate consumer advice, if it screens the film again.

9 Responses

  1. So it takes nearly a year to “investigate” an ACA story, but only 6 months to check out SBS?

    Is there any viable reason why any investigation from ACMA takes so long? Except for a lack of employees perhaps?

    They need to be faster, and they should be able to hand out decent punishments for breaches because until then ACMA is a joke… and a bad one at that. As such, all the networks will simply continue to treat them with disrespect 🙁

  2. At 11.35pm does it really matter if it’s M or MA? If it was 8.30 in the evening I’d say fine make a complaint but at 11.35pm is it really worth wasting taxpayers’ money to investigate this?

  3. Someone has to say it – a French film, black and white, made by a Georgian, and screened at 11.35pm. Can the complainant get a life perhaps? As for snuff film – 13 Tzameti won prestigous awards at both Sundance and Venice film festivals – hardly snuff movie territory.

  4. It was a great movie, though, I watched it and although it was rather disconcerting. it was very interesting.

    M rating is different in various countries and there was no nudity, sex scenes or actual violence, per se, other than getting shot in the head but I can see that it might influence young viewers however, it could have also influenced older viewers as well. How do you rate that?

  5. MAV15+ is unique to SBS, and is their equivalent to AV15+. There was some talk a while ago of harmonising the two, but I don’t know what came of it.

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