Director of Holocaust Movie Starring Late Roy Scheider Slams Facebook for Banning Film’s Ads: ‘Monster with no Oversight’

The final film starring Jaws legend Roy Scheider is finally getting released more than a decade after the actor’s death, but Facebook will not be advertising the movie, taking issue with the title’s title and its “assertions or implications” about race.

In Beautiful Blue Eyes, Scheider plays a cop and Holocaust survivor who travels to Nuremberg to find the Nazi officer who killed his family.

Director Joshua Newton told Rolling Stone this week that he received an email that his long in production film would be restricted from advertising on Facebook. According to the director, the film’s title violates Facebook policy because it includes “direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s race.”

The news comes after Newton spent years struggling to complete his movie. Scheider passed away in 2008 before reshoots could be done, but Newton found that advancements in digital technology over the years allowed him to finally fix footage that would have previously required Scheider’s participation.

Newton, the son of two Holocaust survivors, said that Facebook’s decision trivializes the Holocaust and creates a massive advertising stumbling block for his movie, which opened in over 400 theaters in the U.S. on September 9.

“This is the action of haters – and there are sadly many in our society – who seek to damage the film in order to trivialize the Holocaust,” he said. “Surely, Mark Zuckerberg did not intend this to happen.”

Unfortunately, Facebook stood by the ban even after an appeal, according to an email reviewed by Rolling Stone.

Newton accused Zuckerberg of creating a “monster with no oversight” after the filmmaker’s appeal was rejected.

“Mark Zuckerberg has created a monster with no oversight,” the British director said. “It’s one thing to be flagged by an algorithm. It’s another for Meta-Facebook employees to review the flag and uphold it, knowing full well that the title is not discriminatory and that the film is Holocaust-related.”

Watch the trailer for Beautiful Blue Eyes above via Regal

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