Director Todd Haynes Calls on Hollywood to Stand Strong Against Trump Pressure

“It is an appalling moment that we’re in right now that will take every bit of energy to resist and revert back to a system that, flawed as it is, is something that we’ve taken for granted as Americans,” said Todd Haynes, 64, who has urged the film industry to stand up to Donald Trump’s new administration and warned about the danger of becoming “contaminated” by the radical changes taking place in the United States. Haynes is the director of “Far from Heaven” and “Carol,” and he told AFP in Berlin, where he leads the jury at the city’s Berlinale film festival.

He noted how many American corporations had already positioned themselves to earn favor from the new Trump administration in Washington.

Major U.S. companies from investment bank Goldman Sachs to social media giant Meta have announced changes to their Diversity and Inclusion policies, known as DEI.

DEI initiatives are frequently derided as “woke” by Trump and his supporters.

“We’re already seeing unfortunately, like not necessarily in Hollywood, but in many other places that deal with massive corporate power, already a yielding to this new administration that is just shocking,” Haynes told AFP.

“When people say ‘oh, they’re just playing the long game’, that’s when you find yourself becoming contaminated by the culture that you’re in and losing your own ability to stand up. And that’s what has happened in our past. And we have to be aware of the danger of it,” he continued.

Last week, big Hollywood studio Disney informed its personnel that it was abandoning DEI as a “performance factor,” but would still include “inclusion” as one of its basic values.

The U.S. media reported that some employees were uneasy about the transfer.

This year’s Berlinale, the first significant European film festival since the former reality TV star entered office for the second time on January 20, has been dominated by discussions about the uncertainties brought about by Trump’s new administration.

Filmmaking might be an act of “resistance… to all of the perverse ideas that many far-right parties across the whole world and across Europe are spreading,” according to Tricia Tuttle, the festival’s new American-born director, who kicked off festivities last Friday.

Tricia Tuttle, the new American director of the Berlinale film festival, asserted that cinema could serve as a form of “resistance to the distorted ideas propagated by various far-right groups worldwide, including across Europe”.

Haynes’s upcoming film, which focuses on a gay romance from the 1930s, was put on hold last year after Joaquin Phoenix, the lead actor, withdrew from the project for undisclosed reasons just days before filming was set to commence