Netflix’s Cuties director admits she was bombarded with death threats amid backlash for ‘sexualising’ children
NETFLIX’S Cuties director Maïmouna Doucouré has revealed she was bombarded with death threats amid backlash over “sexualising” children.
The French filmmaker admitted she originally didn’t understand what was going on and even received death threats.
Mignonnes/Cuties tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Amy from a traditional Senegalese-Muslim family.
She joins a dance group called “the cuties” and finds herself torn between her family values and her love for pop culture and dance.
Out of those complaining, many hadn’t even seen the film but had taken offence to the poster created to advertise it.
Reflecting on the controversy, Doucouré told Deadline: “I hadn’t seen the poster until after I started getting all these reactions on social media, direct messages from people, attacks on me.
“I didn’t understand what was going on. That was when I went and saw what the poster looked like.”
The filmmaker went on: “I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was actually making a film that was [un]apologetic about hypersexualisation of children. I also received numerous death threats.”
Swift to rectify the situation, Netflix issued a statement apologising over the “inappropriate artwork”.
It said: “We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.”
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Maïmouna also revealed that Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos called her directly to apologise.
Doucouré revealed they “had several discussions back and forth after this happened” and not only did Netflix apologise publicly, and also personally to me.
Speaking about the streaming Netflix audience, Doucouré told the website that “streamers are a great way to get my stories out and share my messages with more people.”