You won’t find Alex Chan’s 13-minute animated film “The French Democracy” in theaters this weekend, but it’s one of the hottest films in one of the newest genres.

It’s being hailed as a breakthrough for an obscure technique known as “machinima,” where filmmakers use characters, sets and scenes culled from video games to create an original film.

This kind of technique has become accessible to anyone with a computer thanks to the game “The Movies,” in which players run a Hollywood studio and make their own films.

Since it began in October, fans have been posting an average of one film per minute on the Web site of Lionhead Studios (lionshead .com), the game’s developer. These include traditional comedy, fantasy and horror films — and personal diaries.

“People are beginning to find uses for it that we didn’t even think about,” Lionhead’s chief designer and CEO Peter Molyneux said.

“The French Democracy” struck a chord with a nonspecialist audience because it was timely and poignant, he said. It refutes some of the Western news coverage about the riots in France.

“What is also incredible is that there’s a lot of movies that are coming online that have been inspired by ‘The French Democracy’ that are actually commentaries about society in America, society in the U.K.,” he added. “It’s almost as if this has opened a floodgate.”

Chan, 27, a Buddhist, said he was upset about the media blaming the riots on the Muslim community. His story involves three black youths who end up throwing bombs at cars and buildings.

“They become angry, and maybe they have no other way to express themselves, and finally this is the only way they have of getting heard. That’s why I picked this title, ‘The French Democracy,’” Chan said. “It’s a little ironic, in the sense that these youths, for now, have preferred using petrol bombs rather than vote ballots to make themselves heard.”

For more, see machinima.com.