Trump’s Travel Ban Bars Nominees from Oscars
For the first time in Oscar history, a major nominee won’t be in attendance simply because of where he was born.
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film The Salesman is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, had to cancel his trip to the U.S. following Trump’s unjust executive order banning citizens of Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries. Although the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling to continue blocking the travel ban means that he could now attend, Farhadi is boycotting the Oscars in protest of Trump’s ban.
Worse, Khaled Khatib, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize nominated Syrian rescue group, The White Helmets, has been barred from the U.S. by immigration authorities while en route to LA for the ceremony. The 21-year-old Syrian is one of the cinematographers who’s risked his life in the making of the 40-minute Netflix documentary, The White Helmets, a nominee for Best Documentary Short.
This may be the most political Oscars yet as nominees and talent alike use their platform to speak up and to turn out in full force.
The United Talent Agency (UTA) canceled their annual Oscar party and instead hosted the rally in LA yesterday, featuring clients Jodie Foster, Michael J. Fox, Keegan-Michael Key, and Wilmer Valderrama.
“United Voices” was organized to express the creative community’s growing concern with anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and its direct interference on the global exchange of ideas, freedom of speech, and artistic expression.
Throughout the awards season, awardees have used their platform to resist. Meryl Streep spoke truth to power at the Golden Globes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus used her SAG acceptance speech to tell her father’s story of religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France. She denounced the ban and called it un-American. Hidden Figures star Taraji P. Henson called for unity in her rousing acceptance speech at the SAG Awards as well.
This year’s nominees are being urged by previous Academy Award Winners, such as John Irving (2000 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules), to use their platform to speak out. They’re being reminded of what winners are actually given: a brief moment with a global audience to make a difference.
Whether you’re watching the Academy Awards ceremony this weekend, or not, it’s critical that we keep lifting up the stories of courageous people, such as Khaled Khatib (The White Helmets), and of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson (Hidden Figures), of Chiron (Moonlight), of Saroo (Lion), of Mildred and Richard Loving (Loving), and of so many more.
Sharing stories such as theirs is critical to our democracy, now more than ever before, and perhaps our greatest hope of creating empathy and furthering change.
To take action, support The White Helmets. Their courageous work is founded on one guiding principle, a verse from the Quran:
“To save one life is to save all of humanity.”
DONATE now at https://peoplesmillion.whitehelmets.org/act/peoples-million
