British-Indian filmmaker Asif Kapadia blasted Donald Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslim travel to America during a film forum Friday at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Boycott Donald Trump,” Kapadia, who was raised Muslim, said Friday of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee at the 7th annual Winston Baker Film Finance Forum.
“If he was president, I wouldn’t be allowed into the U.S.,” he added, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the 2010 documentary Senna is in Cannes this week to promote his latest documentary, Amy, about the late soul singer Amy Winehouse.
The London-born Kapadia also said the newly elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, would similarly be prohibited from entering the United States if Trump’s proposed ban was put in place.
“[There is] an interesting Trump movie to be made. But right now it is a tragedy,” the documentary filmmaker said during the panel. “And I don’t think he needs any more attention.”
In 2011, Kapadia told the Guardian that his Muslim upbringing informs much of his filmmaking process.
“My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I’m happy to tackle that in cinema,” he told the paper.
Kapadia’s comments about Trump came just one day after George Clooney, in Cannes to promote his latest film Money Monster, vowed there would never be a “President Donald Trump.”
“Fear is not going to be something that drives our country,” Clooney told a room full of international reporters at the press junket for his film. “We’re not going to be scared of Muslims or immigrants or women. We’re not actually afraid of anything. We’re not going to use fear. So that’s not going to be an issue.”
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