The French Democracy begins with a re-enactment of the real-life 27 October 2005 event that triggered riots in France: the electrocution of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré.

Some raised concerns that video game companies would use their copyrights to control the content of derivative machinima films. The French Democracy inspired other politically conscious machinima works and fueled discussion about the art form's potential for political expression. While acknowledging the film's flaws, such as the grammatically poor English subtitles, commentators praised its clear political message and compared it to films such as La Haine and Do the Right Thing. Although real-time-rendered, three-dimensional computer animation ( machinima) had been used in earlier political films, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention for political machinima. The film was uploaded to The Movies Online, Lionhead's website for user-created videos, on 22 November 2005 and was soon covered by American and French press. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production.

Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. The French Democracy is a short 2005 French political film made by Alex Chan using computer animation from Lionhead Studios' 2005 business simulation game The Movies. A scene from The French Democracy, showing dialogue in English subtitles and the three central youths of the film

La haine online with english subtitles