‘Tell Them You Love Me’ Became The No. 1 Title On Netflix. So Why Did So Many Film Festivals Reject It?
deadline.comIt’s been a circuitous journey to the top of the Netflix charts for the documentary Tell Them You Love Me. Sundance rejected it.
So did the Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Festival, and the prestigious Sheffield DocFest in the U.K., according to the filmmakers – director Nick August-Perna and executive producer Louis Theroux. “I was like, what the f*ck?” Theroux remembers thinking after all the rejections.
August-Perna recalls, “It was painful, it was annoying. I think we all felt that we’d made something really special.” The film explores the unsettling case of Dr.
Anna Stubblefield, a white Rutgers University philosophy professor and disability theorist who began working with Derrick Johnson, a non-verbal Black man with cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities, using a scientifically questionable method to help him communicate.
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