Video shows a movie scene being filmed in Chongqing, not a genuine gunfight

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 24, 2022 at 06:44
3 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

A video viewed hundreds of thousands of times across multiple social media platforms purportedly shows a gunfight in Chongqing, a metropolis in southwest China. However, the claim is false; the clip actually shows a movie scene being filmed in the city.

The video was shared on Twitter here on May 1, 2022 and has been viewed more than 267,000 times.

The tweet's simplified Chinese-language caption reads: "Gunfight in Chongqing."

Chongqing is a sprawling megacity in China's southwestern Sichuan province.

The clip appears to show a person running down a corridor, engaged in a gunfight with unseen people behind him.

"What are they shooting?" one person asks off-camera in Chongqing dialect.

"Look [someone] is running there...firing [shots]," the person goes on to say.

Screenshot of the misleading Twitter post, taken on May 13, 2022

The video was also shared alongside a similar claim here, here and here on Twitter, here, here and here on US social media site Gettr, here, here and here on YouTube, and on Facebook here.

But the claim is false; the video shows a movie scene being filmed.

Film shoot

A keyword search found the video was published on the Chinese social media and messaging platform WeChat by the Chongqing government on May 1.

The post is titled: "A gunfight somewhere in Yongchuan? It's fake, it's actually a film shoot."

The article states that the clip in fact shows a film shoot by Emei Film Studio in a commercial area in Chongqing's Yongchuan district.

Below are two screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading posts (left) and the video embedded in the WeChat post (right):

Screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading posts (left) and the video embedded in the WeChat post (right)

It also includes another video -- taken on set -- showing the scene being filmed in the daytime.

Subsequent keyword searches found several other videos of the film shoot shared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

This post, uploaded on April 30 and geotagged at Yunan Road Commercial City, shows the staged gunfight from the same building that the scene is being filmed.

Text superimposed over the video states it was a film shoot by Emei Film Studio on April 29 in Yongchuan district.

Matching features such as corresponding light fixtures and lighting in the walkway can be seen when comparing the misleading video circulating on social media (left) with this Douyin video (right):

A comparison of the misleading video (left) and the Douyin video (right), with corresponding features highlighted by AFP

AFP found no official reports about a gunfight in Chongqing in late April.

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