BFI apologises to filmmaker over racial discrimination complaint

British Film Institute CEO Ben Roberts has issued an apology to a prominent filmmaker of colour, after an independent investigation – which coincides with the BFI London Film Festival – concluded that the BFI “badly” mishandled his racial discrimination complaint.

Verita, the complaints reviewer for National Lottery-funded organizations, concluded that the BFI had “badly handled” the long-running discrimination complaint made by Faisal Qureshi, the producer behind the BAFTA-winning film Four Lions and HBO’s Emmy-winning Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland.

The report stated that the UK’s most powerful and influential movie funding body’s response fell “well short” of expected standards.

However, there was not enough evidence to draw conclusions on Qureshi’s view that there was “systemic racism within the BFI.”

Last year, we reported that Deadline had published an in-depth report regarding Qureshi’s complaint. Qureshi was given incorrect information about accessing National Lottery funding and said that he was inappropriately discouraged from bidding for funding.

BFI executives previously apologized verbally to Qureshi, but the film body did not meet his requests for a formal written apology. Until now.

Roberts has written to Qureshi, admitting that the Verita report “clearly indicates that our handling of your complaint fell well short of both your expectations and ours, and we let you down. I would like to reassure you that we take the findings of the Verita report seriously and have already made several improvements to our complaints procedure.”

The CEO said that he appreciated that Qureshi remains “dissatisfied with the BFI’s support for filmmakers and particularly filmmakers from the global majority.

The BFI added that it “cares deeply” about being an anti-racist organization and that they’d “overhauled (their) complaints process and handling of complex cases.”

Qureshi responded by saying: “There is only so many times organisations can say they have learned from their mistakes, usually by inflicting trauma on ethnic minorities. That it took five years to get this far only for them to go ‘trust us again’ is not a reasonable reassurance. Maybe a more significant one is change in their leadership.”

Qureshi said he remained uncertain about whether to accept Roberts’ apology or his offer of a meeting.

“It’s kind of like the unrepentant school bully has been compelled to give an apology,” he said. “I feel like a test pilot or a lab rat pushing the envelope of what can be achieved within the field of bureaucratic apathy.”

Additional sources • Deadline