Christchurch Terror Movie Producer Steps Aside After ‘White Savior’ Backlash
NOT HER STORY
Hagen Hopkins
The producer of a planned movie about mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques in 2019 has stepped aside after complaints the film would focus on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern rather than the Muslim victims of New Zealand's worst terror attack. Fifty-one people were killed when a white supremacist gunman attacked the two mosques, livestreaming the atrocity on Facebook. Ardern, who won global praise for her empathetic reaction to the attack, is due to be portrayed by Rose Byrne in the planned movie They Are Us. Deadline reported that a petition from an Islamic youth group complaining that the project marginalizes “the victims and survivors and instead centres the response of a white woman” has attracted 60,000 signatures. Deadline said producer Philippa Campbell had pulled out of the project after hearing “the strength of people’s views.” Ardern herself told TVNZ that there were “so many stories that should be told at some point, I don’t consider mine to be one of them.”