Why I Stir Shit 

Here’s a clip from a post-screening discussion of my movie Unshamed in London.

An audience member commented that the movie had gone somewhere many people would think it shouldn’t:
Incest. Pedophilia.

Yes. At one point, I did cut the scene.
Then I put it back.
I put it back because I keep hearing the same stories from different people, again and again.
In different countries, living completely different lives.

I’ve watched people shut down halfway through a sentence because they can’t bring themselves to say what comes next.
And every time I think:

Wow. How many people are carrying this?

We call these subjects too dark.
Too disturbing.
Too dangerous.

Not appropriate for this room.
Not appropriate for that audience.

So where exactly are they appropriate?

Where are we supposed to put the things we’re not allowed to say?
Does silence really kill these uncomfortable truths?
Or does it feed them?

So I put the scene back in because removing it felt like looking away, and I believe we’ve looked away for long enough.

Then came the pushback.
Some of it, absurdly, from people who didn’t even watch the movie.

They saw a trailer. Read a description. Heard what the film contained.
And decided certain things simply shouldn’t be shown.

Well, I didn’t make this film to appease that instinct.
I made it because I see us, as a society, living at the effect of the things human beings have spent generations refusing to look at.

I don’t regret keeping the scene because I’d rather be cancelled for putting something real on screen than applauded for making something feel safe.
And while this might feel radical now, I hope that ten years from now these scenes feel almost ordinary.

I hope people watch them and wonder why they ever caused so much discomfort at all.

You couldn’t talk about this back then?

That would be progress.