Why You’ll Be Watching Fewer Problematic Movies

The hidden side of cancel culture at Sundance

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

About 100 feature films screened at the recently-wrapped Sundance Film Festival. Attendees could spend days in front of the big screen watching a huge variety of films. So much to choose from, but audiences still didn’t know what they were missing. 

The 2023 festival was the first since an organizational eruption changed how Sundance decides which films would be included in its prestigious lineup. It began with a film called “Jihad Rehab.”

Just over a year ago, all the right people loved “Jihad Rehab.” The documentary feature premiered at Sundance, and reviewers gushed. The Guardian called it “a victory.” TheWrap went a step further calling it “a revelation.” Variety went further still declaring that the film “feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.”

In the film, first-time feature director Meg Smaker introduces viewers to four former Guantanamo detainees who had been sent to a Saudi deradicalization program. The men reflect on their lives, and explain what attracted them to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They discuss the torture they endured, their regrets, and their future. 

Smaker seemed to be on the fast track to a huge distribution deal. Then the festival darling quickly transformed into a heretic. 

After its triumphant unveiling, a small group of vocal Sundance employees spoke out against “Jihad Rehab.” An internal battle unfolded, and when it was over something unusual happened—Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente and then-festival director Tabitha Jackson issued a public apology:

[I]t is clear that the showing of this film hurt members of our community — in particular, individuals from Muslim and MENASA communities — and for that we are deeply sorry. 

It didn’t seem to matter that prominent Muslims championed the film, including former imam Jihad Turk and Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali, who describes the film as “a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self-reckoning and accountability, and a look at the devastating fallout of flawed U.S. and Saudi policy.”

Like timid college administrators disinviting speakers, other festivals, including SXSW, took note and disinvited “Jihad Rehab.”

In March 2022, more than 230 artists condemned the film in an open letter. (Smaker says she was told by Sundance that 95% had not watched the film, a statistic the festival was able to provide based on virtual screening attendance data.)

Reviewers largely praised “Jihad Rehab” in January and February of 2022, but the two reviews that ran after the controversy became public, panned the film.

The New York Times notes that the film’s enemies continued the attack on social media and pressured Smaker’s investors, advisors, and friends to withdraw their names from the credits.

Even Abigail Disney, the film’s executive producer and an important figure in the documentary world, turned on Smaker.  

“‘Jihad Rehab’ has landed like a truckload of hate on people whom I sincerely love and respect,” wrote Disney in a public apology. “[It] created deep and unnecessary pain and for that, I take responsibility and apologize.”

Instead of attracting a huge distribution deal, Smaker’s film repelled just about anyone who could help it reach a big, mainstream audience. 

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Why all the fuss? 

In an article titled, “Why Film Festivals Are Steering Clear of Controversial Movies,” Variety describes the intra-Sundance dispute that pitted the film festival against the Sundance Institute:

Sources describe a knockdown, drag-out showdown between programming director Kim Yutani, defending the film, and some members of the institute, who hadn’t watched “Jihad Rehab” but wanted to placate those outraged over its inclusion in the lineup. 

The film’s critics took aim at Smaker, namely for being a non-Arab director and potentially endangering the film’s subjects while reinforcing stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists.

The article goes on to summarize the chill that has swept through film festivals:

[T]hat quick-to-capitulate reflex underscores a new, unspoken modus operandi in which festivals — once the bastion of provocative, button-pushing fare — are desperate to avoid controversy and the wrath of any identity-focused Twitter mob.

That summary almost hits the mark, but not quite. After all, festival programmers still delight in pushing buttons, but they usually push the same buttons. They still delight in controversy, but it must be the correct type of controversy.

Consider “Justice,” a correctly controversial film.

Sundance allowed for the late addition of the feature documentary that re-examines the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from a point of view critical of Kavanaugh. So far reviews of the film have been mixed, but critics generally agree that “Justice” fell short of expectations. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film “regurgitates information that was largely already in the public sphere,” and the review concludes, “Considering that ‘Justice’ was touted at Sundance as a powerful indictment of a corrupt system, it turns out to be a bit of a nonevent.”

What are the chances that Sundance programmers would issue a last-minute invitation to a film of equal quality about the same topic, but with a point of view more sympathetic to Kavanaugh?

One of the most important figures in the documentary space hit the mark more precisely:

“If we see something that we think is going to be problematic, we might shy away from it, even if we think it’s a good film,” says Submarine Entertainment’s Josh Braun, the sales agent behind hit documentaries like “American Factory,” “Citizenfour, “20 Feet from Stardom,” and “The Social Dilemma.”

“Everyone is probably a little more attuned to what could end up being problematic. There’s ‘controversial,’ and then there’s ‘problematic.’ I think that’s a fine line.”

Industry professionals have long known the rules that separate controversial from problematic. The rules are especially important when filmmakers explore hot-button topics like race, sex, gender, religion, and terrorism. Though unwritten, nearly everyone follows them. And the rulebook evolves—sometimes gradually, sometimes in fits and starts. 

After a tumultuous 2020, a rather narrow-minded industry grew even more cautious. Yet “Jihad Rehab” survived the heightened scrutiny, and Sundance granted Smaker access to their elite club. The implosion that followed suggests that the film industry’s Overton window has narrowed yet again. 

Take LGBTQ content. The industry is keen on it, yet even here gatekeepers continuously revise the divide between controversial and problematic. 

The one-name indie director Terracino is a veteran of top-tier festivals, and expected his latest project, “Waking Up Dead,” to hit the usual glamorous stops. But recently he spoke to Variety about what he calls the “woke pushback” of festival organizers:

“My gay lead character [is initially] transphobic, which is something I wanted to explore — transphobia within the gay community — and they had an issue with that. They were scared to show a film with a transphobic lead.” He says he was also asked: “‘Why does your Latino lead have to bond with a white woman?’ I was really taken aback by that one. Here I am, a gay Latino filmmaker, and I have to answer about bullshit racial politics?”

Outfest rejected “Waking Up Dead,” then Frameline and NewFest followed suit, meaning the three biggest LGBTQ festivals passed on the latest offering from a celebrated director and a longtime club member.

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Only a tiny sliver of film fans will ever hear about the dustups involving “Waking Up Dead,” and “Jihad Rehab,” yet such episodes shape the kind of content that’s served to them at home, in theaters, and at festivals.

“You can sense the fear out there among the festivals. They are terrified to show a film that someone may object to,” says Terracino. “A programmer at a Latino film festival told me, ‘If just one person objects to your film, I can lose my job.’”

More than one person objected to “Jihad Rehab,” but it took only a small group to start the snowballing of outrage that eventually destroyed the film, Smaker’s finances (she says the episode left her nearly broke), and Tabitha Jackson’s job. Sources tell Variety that, although it’s not part of the official reason, her departure from Sundance is indeed related to her handling of “Jihad Rehab” (which has been renamed “The Unredacted”). 

You can bet other festival heads, programmers, sales agents, and gatekeepers will take note of Jackson’s exit as well as the film community’s paranoid response to movies that festivals would have embraced just a short time ago. 

They will likely make decisions that err even more on the side of caution. Why provoke Twitter? Why risk angering the wrong people? Why risk losing my job? 

Their decisions will likely result in fewer cancel culture eruptions because they will filter out problematic content long before it reaches audiences. 

And hardly anyone will know.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker whose recent work includes “Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn,” “Can We Take a Joke?” featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette and a forthcoming feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.