Writing in France's Le Monde newspaper (and reported by The Local), Jacques Mandelbaum called Nolan "witheringly impolite" and "indifferent" towards his country by disregarding the role it played in the battle.

"A dozen seconds devoted to a group of French soldiers defending the city who were not very friendly and a few more to a French soldier disguised as British in order to try to flee the massacre?" he asks. "That does not account for the indispensable French involvement to this crazy evacuation.

"No one can deny a director's right to focus his point of view on what he sees fit, as long as it does not deny the reality of which it claims to represent. Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk? Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?"