'Cuties' director Maimouna Doucoure receives death threats amid poster backlash

Netflix's upcoming drama 'Cuties' has been making headlines for wrong reasons. After receiving severe backlash over its official poster, French filmmaker and 'Cuties' director Maimouna Doucoure revealed in an interview that she has received numerous death threats.

''Things happened fairly quickly because, after the delays, I was completely concentrating on the film’s release in France. I discovered the poster at the same time as the American public,'' she reveals.

''My reaction, It was a strange experience. 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.''

Also read: Netflix apologises for using 'inappropriate artwork' as cover poster of French film 'Cuties'

''I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film, who thought I was making a film that was apologetic about hypersexualization of children,'' she says. ''I also received numerous death threats.''

Set to arrive on September 9 on Netflix, the drama revolves around a traditional Senegalese Muslim girl who is caught between two contrasting sides, traditional values and internet culture. It also discusses the hypersexualization of pre-adolescent girls.

At Sundance Film Festival, director Doucoure talked about the movie, ''In a moment, a group of dancers comes on the stage and dance. It was very fascinating but at the same time very disturbing because they were only 11 years old, but they were dancing with a very sensual dance, wearing very short clothes,”.