The Gotham Supports the Muslim and MENASA Community
This letter is in reference to the Jihad Rehab conversation that has grown out of the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month as well as subsequent communications The Gotham has received.
The Gotham Labs (formerly IFP Labs) have a long history of supporting independent filmmakers and providing mentorship during post-production. We do not provide funding for our lab projects, but our support does help raise the profile of individual projects and increase their prospect of getting into film festivals and securing financial support. Jihad Rehab participated in the 2019 IFP Labs, and we regret that the finished film went on to cause such pain to the Muslim and MENASA community.
In recent years, our programs’ review processes and selection criteria have been amended to ensure that ethics, accountability, and intentionality are at the forefront when it comes to authorship and treatment of a film’s subject matter. These processes include a change to our application, which now requires filmmakers to detail how their project and process is accountable to the people and communities they are portraying. We have also expanded our reviewer handbook to help reviewers consider and account for potential biases. We are committed to continuing to re-evaluate these practices on an ongoing basis in an effort to do better.
We share the concern and passion about accurate, fair, and inclusive representation of the Muslim and MENASA community—both on-screen and behind the scenes—and welcome the opportunity to work with this community and all communities in order to create a more equitable, vigilant, and transparent film and media ecosystem.
Sincerely,
The Gotham Film & Media Institute