‘Passion’ still seeks French distributor

French film distributors denied Friday that they were boycotting Mel Gibson’s controversial movie “The Passion of the Christ” for fear it could cause anti-Semitic reactions in a country already struggling with the issue.

The film, which premiered Wednesday in the United States and will open in Europe over the next few weeks, has not found a distributor in movie-mad France -- a fact fueling media speculation that distributors thought it was too hot to handle.

Marin Karmitz, head of the National Federation of Film Distributors, dismissed that as rumor and said the film’s U.S. distributor had only invited two or three French counterparts to a screening of “The Passion” in London, instead of opening the bidding to all distributors. None of them has decided whether to bid for it.

From Reuters