{"id":2250110,"date":"2026-01-25T21:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2250110"},"modified":"2026-01-25T21:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T21:51:15","slug":"sundance-filmmakers-stars-react-to-ice-chaos-in-minnesota-we-cannot-act-like-this-is-not-happening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/sundance-filmmakers-stars-react-to-ice-chaos-in-minnesota-we-cannot-act-like-this-is-not-happening\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance filmmakers, stars react to ICE chaos in Minnesota: ‘We cannot act like this is not happening’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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PARK CITY, Utah\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/span>As filmmakers celebrated independent moviemaking at the Sundance Film Festival, events unfolding nationally<\/a> cast a pall on the indie showcase\u2019s final installment in Park City.<\/p>\n

More than a thousand miles away from the mountain town, ongoing ICE crackdowns in Minneapolis resulted in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti Saturday morning by federal agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable and disturbing all at the same time,\u201d said director Alex Gibney, at Sundance with \u201cKnife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,\u201d to The Times Saturday afternoon<\/a>. \u201cI mean, what\u2019s great about it is that you have evidence. You have evidence of the truth in terms of this kind of state-sponsored terrorism being meted out on Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed<\/a> in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. Footage of both Pretti\u2019s and Good\u2019s deaths spread widely across social media and news reports, igniting protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not normal times,\u201d actor Edward Norton told The Times in an interview Sunday morning. \u201cIt\u2019s like we have extrajudicial assaults on Americans and humans going on on a daily basis now. And it\u2019s not OK. Even though all people kind of have to put one foot in front of the other and deal with the demands of the day, we cannot act like this is not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norton is one of the stars of \u201cThe Invite,\u201d which premiered at Sundance on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what they\u2019re doing in Minnesota with the strike needs to expand,\u201d he continued. \u201cI think we should be talking about a national general economic strike until this is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around noon Sunday, a small group of anti-ICE protesters briefly walked up Main Street with signs, urging people who were in line to buy Sundance merchandise to get out and join them.<\/p>\n

Some filmmakers hoped that the festival would provide escape from a distracting reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there\u2019s a great tradition of storytelling that\u2019s helped humans get through difficult times for many, many centuries,\u201d said director and star Olivia Wilde, here with both a new directorial effort, \u201cThe Invite,\u201d and Gregg Araki\u2019s \u201cI Want Your Sex.\u201d<\/a> \u201cI hope that allowing people to laugh last night felt good. But, you know, we\u2019re very aware that Americans right now are out on the streets marching \u2014 and courageously so. It\u2019s devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Margaret Cho, one of the stars of \u201cRun Amok,\u201d a coming-of-age dramedy that involves gun violence, described the pain that the public is witnessing as \u201cunfathomable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren are being put into detention and we\u2019re watching it,\u201d Cho told The Times in an interview on Sunday. \u201cWe\u2019re watching people being murdered in the street. So I think that what\u2019s important is that we can address that with art. And this film is a perfect example of trying to heal through art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile some stars visibly supported protesters. Wilde wore an \u201cICE Out\u201d pin to \u201cThe Invite\u201d premiere and a \u201cBe Good\u201d pin (in reference to Renee Good) on Sunday morning. Natalie Portman, in town for the premiere of a new art-world satire, \u201cThe Gallerist,\u201d was also seen wearing both pins around Sundance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a tiny way, wearing a pin does nothing but at least we\u2019re able to show support,\u201d Wilde said.<\/p>\n

At the premiere of his new film \u201cZi,\u201d monomonikered director Kogonada acknowledged the events in Minnesota as he introduced the film, the crowd applaudingenthusiastically.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a believer in what [Roger] Ebert says \u2014 that cinema is an empathizing machine \u2014 and in the darkest time you hope that art doesn\u2019t feel indulgent, that it deepens our feeling of and sense of humanity,\u201d said Kogonada. \u201cI just feel like, more than ever, it feels important to do that and to counter what\u2019s happening around the world and create empathy, which we really desperately need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARK CITY, Utah\u00a0\u2014\u00a0As filmmakers celebrated independent moviemaking at the Sundance Film Festival, events unfolding nationally cast a pall on the indie showcase\u2019s final installment in Park City. More than a thousand miles away from the mountain town, ongoing ICE crackdowns in Minneapolis resulted in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti Saturday morning by federal agents. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2250111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2250110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Sundance-filmmakers-stars-react-to-ICE-chaos-in-Minnesota-We.com2Fdd2F2a2F2a6a8e2042d7bd3a5412ca82.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2250112,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250110\/revisions\/2250112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2250111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}