Cinemas in South Africa will not be showing the documentary about US First Lady Melania Trump that is due to be released around the world on Friday.
The South African distributor Filmfinity has decided not to release it, its head of sales and marketing told the New York Times and South Africa-based website News24. The company was not explicit about the reasons behind the move.
The film, Melania, is not promoted on the websites of the country’s main cinema chains. One Cape Town independent cinema contacted by the BBC said that it was called by Filmfinity and told not to list it.
Relations between the US and South Africa have seriously deteriorated over the past year.
Amazon has reportedly paid $35m (£25m) to market the film which follows Melania Trump in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration on 20 January last year.
It is also believed that Amazon paid around $40m for the rights to the film.
“Based on recent developments, we’ve taken the decision to not go ahead with a theatrical release in territory,” Filmfinity’s Thobashan Govindarajulu is quoted as saying by the New York Times.
He told News24 that the decision had been taken “given the current climate”.
The executive did not elaborate on what was he meant by “recent developments” or “current climate”.
Attempts by the BBC to get comment from Filmfinity, which describes itself as the leading film distributor in southern Africa, have so far been unsuccessful.
But contacting the independent Labia cinema in Cape Town, the BBC was told that it was called by Filmfinity who said that the film would not be playing.
Show times for Melania are not listed on the websites of South Africa’s two main cinema chains, Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro.
Ster Kinekor’s publicity page for Melania is not accessible.
Nu Metro trailed the film on its Instagram account a fortnight ago. Its website’s Melania page still exists, but does not list any show times – unlike the page for the drama Hamnet, which is also released in South Africa on Friday.
Since Donald Trump came to power a year ago, US relations with South Africa have slumped.
He has been promoting the widely discredited idea that there is a “white genocide” against South Africa’s Afrikaner community. Last May, Trump confronted South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa over the issue in a tense White House meeting.
The president has also imposed high tariffs on South African goods and cut aid programmes.
His anger was also partly fuelled by Pretoria’s role in bringing a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The US ally has strongly rejected the allegation of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as “baseless”.
By BBC News
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