Producers Of Movie About Falling In Love With Nazis Using DMCA To Silence Criticism

Apparently the producers of the movie "Where Hands Touch," which is being widely panned as terrible (NY Times calls it a "gut-wrenching misfire" and notes "by the end of the movie, my jaw felt unhinged from dropping so often."), aren't responding well to the criticism. While some of the criticism is about the "plodding" storyline, much of it is about the main plot, which is about a black woman in Nazi Germany -- who appears to support the Nazi cause -- falling in love with a Hitler Youth.

The film got little attention in its theatrical release, but became available online recently, and apparently the producers decided that people tweeting negative things about it deserve to be hit with DMCA takedowns. It seems to have started with Haaniyah Angus who live tweeted watching the film. Reading the entire thread is a treat (seriously, go read it), here are just a couple of clips from her live tweeting:

Anyway, there's a lot more like that. In short, the film is getting mocked widely. Angus' thread was so good and so thorough that Vulture published a conversation with her about just how bad the film is (another clip, but go read the whole thing):

Oh God, there are so many scenes that made me physically cringe. But I think the worst is when her little white brother (whose existence is never explained) says that her father was black “head to toe.” I don’t know why, but that piece of dialogue just made me want to curl up in a ball and scream. Other than that, I think the scene where a Hitler Youth rally takes place in front of Leyna’s apartment and for some reason her first logical thought is, Oh, I’ll go hang with the li’l Nazis. As most would guess, they aren’t happy to see a black girl, and then proceed to call her a nigga. It’s just so much at once ...

At one point in her thread, Angus uses a very short clip from the film to show how the film uses the awful romcom "rush to the airport, and see each other through a crowd of moving people" trope... except in a Nazi labor camp. You can guess what happened next: the producer of the film, Charles Hanson, filed a DMCA takedown notice:

Charlie Lyne saw this and wrote a good thread pointing out, why this use of the DMCA to censor negative criticism was clearly bullshit.

Lyne explains in detail what happened -- even using the same short clip -- to criticize the filmmakers for censoring criticism. You'll surely guess what happens next. Yup! They send a DMCA notice about his thread too: