French Court Orders Reinstatement of Censored Gaza Soccer Photo at Deauville Festival

For a public exhibition to legally remove a documented work of photojournalism under French law, authorities must prove a tangible threat to public order—a constraint that the coastal city of Deauville failed to meet this week. On August 31, an administrative court in Caen ordered the Deauville Sports Images Festival to reinstate a photograph of a football match in Gaza, ruling that the municipality's preemptive censorship of the image was illegal.[1][4]

The photograph, captured on February 14, 2026, by Associated Press photojournalist Jehad Alshrafi, depicts players from the Gaza Sports Club and the Egyptian club Al-Ahly competing on a makeshift dirt pitch. Surrounding the two teams are the heavily damaged buildings of the enclave, capturing a moment of athletic normalcy amid a landscape of severe destruction.[1][5]

The festival jury originally selected Alshrafi's work to be one of the 300 images displayed across the Normandy seaside resort. According to the organizers, the curation was made without political intention, chosen specifically to illustrate the persistence of sport "even in the most terrible situations."[1]

But halfway through the outdoor exhibition, which opened to the public on June 6, the photograph vanished. Around August 20, Deauville officials quietly replaced Alshrafi’s work with a picture of cyclists. The municipality later confirmed the swap followed requests from unnamed external sources, stating they did not want to "enter into controversy or offend anyone."[1][5]

The quiet removal quickly drew the exact controversy the city claimed to be avoiding. Sylvain Larcher, a local political secretary, publicly questioned the erasure of the image, arguing that hiding the photograph suppressed the reality of the subjects' resilience. Mohammed Abu Srour, a sports director in the West Bank, called the removal "deeply troubling," noting that the image documented a reality that should not be hidden from the European public.[5]

In response to the censorship, the rights group Observatoire de la liberté de création (OLC) filed an emergency legal appeal. The organization sought to protect freedom of expression and force the municipality to return the photograph to its designated spot in the Deauville Sport Images Festival.[1][2]

In court, Marie-Therese Sur-Le Liboux, a lawyer representing the Deauville town hall, defended the removal by citing a risk of public disorder. She argued that local authorities had observed a "torrent of hatred" on social media regarding the image, though she did not provide specific examples of the threats to the court.[2][4]

The presiding judge rejected the city's defense, noting that the municipality could not point to a single physical incident, protest, or demonstration at the festival site during the two months the photograph was on display. The court concluded that the mayor's order was not a "necessary, appropriate, and proportionate measure" to preserve public order.[1][4]

Agnès Tricoire, head of the OLC, welcomed the suspension of the ban but warned that further legal action would follow if the original exhibition banner had been destroyed by city workers. She characterized the potential destruction of the physical print as "scandalous."[2][4]

With the festival scheduled to close on September 6, the window for the public to see the reinstated image is narrow. Deauville officials informed the court that reprinting the large-scale photograph and returning it to its original location will take six days, leaving it on display for only the final hours of the event.[2][4]