Director apologises for indigenous family claims after film pulled out of Sundance Festival
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After the controversy blew up, Michelle Latimer apologised after mistakenly naming Kitigan Zibi as her family’s ancestral community in Quebec before confirming that link with local elders.
Documentary ‘Inconvenient Indian’ has been withdrawn from the Sundance Film Fetival after maker Michelle Latimer came under scrutiny for claiming Indigenous family roots in a Quebec Algonquin community. This happened while she was promoting her film ahead of its Toronto Film Festival world premiere last summer.
The National Film Board of Canada said in a statement, "After engaging with the Indigenous participants who appear onscreen, the NFB’s Indigenous advisory group, and industry partners, the NFB, 90th Parallel Productions and producer Jesse Wente have decided to withdraw Inconvenient Indian from active distribution,"
Canada's public film producer said the film would be pulled from film festivals, including Sundance.
After the controversy blew up, Michelle Latimer apologised after mistakenly naming Kitigan Zibi as her family’s ancestral community in Quebec before confirming that link with local elders.
The film ‘Inconvenient Indian’ is an adaptation of Thomas King's book Inconvenient Indian, in which the American-born Canadian writer meditates on what it means to be "Indian" in North America.
The film was set to have a US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
After the film was pulled from the festival, the Sundance Festival said in a statement: "We understand and respect the decision by the film team to withdraw the work from our festival.”