The 2017 Oscars ceremony has emerged as an unlikely battleground for the fight against Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and travellers from predominantly Muslim countries as film-makers affected by the restrictions vowed not to attend.
An Oscar-nominated Iranian film-maker said he would not attend next month’s ceremony in Hollywood even if he were offered an exemption to Trump’s ban, which includes visitors from Iran.
Asghar Farhadi, whose The Salesman is nominated for best foreign language film, said any possible exception to the travel ban would involve “ifs and buts which are in no way acceptable to me”.
Friday’s decision by the US president to ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US has thrown into doubt whether the Iranian cast and crew can attend the awards show, which takes place in Los Angeles in February.
Under the order, Iranians who do not have a green card or dual US nationality are not allowed into the country. It is not clear whether there are exemptions for cases such as Farhadi’s.
The organiser of the Oscars said it was “extremely troubling” that film-makers could be barred from entering the US.
Farhadi originally planned to attend the ceremony if possible and draw the media’s attention to “the unjust circumstances which have arisen for the immigrants and travellers of several countries to the United States”, he wrote to the New York Times. But the conditions that would be attached to any potential entry visa were unacceptable, he said.
He compared the framing of the travel ban to the rhetoric of hardliners in Iran. “In order to understand the world, they have no choice but to regard it via an ‘us and them’ mentality, which they use to create a fearful image of ‘them’ and inflict fear in the people of their own countries,” he wrote.
A spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said: “As supporters of film-makers – and the human rights of all people – around the globe, we find it extremely troubling that Asghar Farhadi, the director of the Oscar-winning film from Iran A Separation, along with the cast and crew of this year’s Oscar-nominated film The Salesman, could be barred from entering the country because of their religion or country of origin.”
The Academy added that it celebrated film-making “which seeks to transcend borders and speak to audiences around the world, regardless of national, ethnic, or religious differences”.
Even before the travel ban was announced, one of the film’s stars, Taraneh Alidoosti, an Iranian actor who lives in the US, called Trump’s immigration policies racist and vowed to boycott the ceremony in protest.
She wrote on Twitter:
Trump's visa ban for Iranians is racist. Whether this will include a cultural event or not,I won't attend the #AcademyAwards 2017 in protest pic.twitter.com/CW3EF6mupo
— Taraneh Alidoosti (@t_alidoosti) January 26, 2017
Trump’s executive order, issued on Friday night, indefinitely blocked US entry to all those fleeing conflict in Syria and imposed a 90-day ban on people from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. He said the move was to allow for “extreme vetting” and to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out” of the US.
Stars from the film industry voiced anger at Trump’s immigration policies. The film-maker Michael Moore tweeted:
To our Muslim neighbors in the world: I & tens of millions of others are so very sorry. The majority of Americans did not vote 4 this man.
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 28, 2017
The actor and director Rob Reiner tweeted: “Along with liar, racist, misogynist, fool, infantile, sick, narcissist – with the Muslim ban we can now add heartless and evil to [Donald Trump’s] repertoire.”
Farhadi’s film A Separation won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2012.
This year’s Academy Awards take place on 26 February.
Press Association and the Associated Press contributed to this report