'2016' Oscar Snub Has Filmmakers Claiming Political Bias

Gerald Molen, who produced the Academy Award-winning 'Schindler's List,' said the box-office success of the anti-Obama documentary proves the film was a hit: "The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood."

Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List, is claiming political bias because a documentary movie he produced this year isn't up for an Oscar, even though that film, 2016: Obama’s America, made more money at the box office than the combined earning of the 15 films the Academy deemed eligible.

2016, a negative take on President Barack Obama co-written and directed by author Dinesh D’Souza, earned $33.4 million at the domestic box office. But its omission on the list of the 15 documentaries the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday would advance in the voting process makes it ineligible for an Oscar.

"Dinesh warned me this might happen," Molen said with a laugh Tuesday. "The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood circles. The film’s outstanding success means that America went to see the documentary in spite of how Hollywood feels about it."

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D'Souza echoed his producer's words.

"I want to thank the Academy for not nominating our film,” D’Souza joked. "By ignoring 2016, the top-performing box-office hit of 2012, and pretending that films like Searching for Sugar Man and This Is Not a Film are more deserving of an Oscar, our friends in Hollywood have removed any doubt average Americans may have had that liberal political ideology, not excellence, is the true standard of what receives awards."

The documentaries from 2012 that the Academy has deemed Oscar-worthy besides Sugar Man and Not a Film are Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Bully, Chasing Ice, Detropia, Ethel, 5 Broken Cameras, The Gatekeepers, The House I Live In, How to Survive a Plague, The Imposter, The Invisible War, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and The Waiting Room.

Email: Paul.Bond@thr.com