‘Amy’ Director Asif Kapadia: ‘Boycott Donald Trump’

Amy director Asif Kapadia says American voters should “boycott Donald Trump” over the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s call to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

“If [Trump] was president, I wouldn’t be allowed into the U.S. Nor would the new mayor of London,” said Kapadia to the The Hollywood Reporter at the Cannes Film Festival.  Kapadia, a British-born Muslim, won the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award for his 2015 documentary on Amy Winehouse.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has been critical of Trump’s dangerous rhetoric about Muslims, telling the New York Times that the mogul’s words “play into the hands of extremists” and is “ignorant about Islam.” After Trump said he’d welcome a Khan visit to America since “there will always be exceptions” to the Muslim ban, the mayor fired back that he didn’t want to be an “exception” to an “ignorant” law.

“If Donald Trump becomes the president I’ll be stopped from going there by virtue of my faith, which means I can’t engage with American mayors and swap ideas,” Khan added.

Kapadia said that, as a filmmaker, “it isn’t an issue to make a film in India, in the U.S. or Japan, to make a movie not in English. That’s why I love movies, because it is about crossing borders.” He admitted, though, that eventually there is “an interesting Trump movie to be made. But at the moment it is a tragedy. … And I don’t think he needs any more attention.”