No, This Video Does Not Show Queen Elizabeth II Mistreating African Children

This is a clip from a 1901 short film named Enfants Annamites.

Fact-check: This video does not show Queen Elizabeth II. 

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing a woman dressed up in royal British attire throwing coins at vulnerable children, while they are seen scrambling to collect them, is going viral on social media.

The claim states that it shows Queen Elizabeth II mistreating African children.

The claim comes after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022. Charles, the former Prince of Wales will formally be proclaimed King on 10 September.

However, this video does not show Queen Elizabeth II. This is a clip from a short film Enfants Annamites by Gabriel Veyre. It was filmed in Vietnam and was released in 1901, which predates the birth of the Queen.

CLAIM

The claim with the video suggested that the Africans won't mourn Queen Elizabeth II's death because she has mistreated Africans in the past.

An arhive can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Similar claims can be seen here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video and came across a Wikimedia Commons page, a public media file repository, which carried the screenshot from the black and white version of the viral video.

The image was described as a still from Enfants Annamites which was directed by Gabriel Veyre, shot between April 1899-March 1900, and released in 1901.

The description added that the image showed two women, supposedly the wife and a daughter of Governor General Paul Doumer, throwing coins in front of Vietnamese children, who were formerly referred to as Annamites.

The page also carried a longer version of the clip.

A still from the video on Wikimedia.

(Source: Wikimedia/Screenshot)

Taking a cue, we searched for 'Enfants Annamites, Gabriel Veyre' and came across the French website Catalogue Lumière which also carried a screenshot from the video.

The title of the report read – 'Annamese children collecting sapeques in front of the Ladies' Pagoda'.

The keyword search also led us to a YouTube video uploaded by Iconauta, a channel that posts shots from old films.

The description of the video mentioned that this video was shot specifically in Vietnam's Annam, at the time of French Indochina.

We also found an IMDb page about the short film.

Clealry, an old short film from 1901 which does not show Queen Elizabeth II is being shared to falsely claim that it shows her mistreating African children.

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