Zack Snyder Denies 'Fascist' Label at TIFF — SkimNews
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- The Last Photograph premiered at TIFF, produced by Snyder's wife Deborah Snyder from a Kurt Johnstad screenplay, shot in 32 days in Colombia while Snyder ran a 100-degree COVID fever and soldiered through.
- Stuart Martin stars as a former DEA operative searching for his murdered sister's children in an unnamed South American country alongside Fra Fee as a heroin-shooting war photographer.
- Zack Snyder pushed back on being called a 'fascist,' 'homophobe,' 'transphobic,' and 'bisexual' online, arguing "'300' is one of the gayest movies ever made" and "obviously I'm not a fascist."
- Snyder compared the backlash to the Berlin Film Festival premiere of "300," where audiences booed, walked out, and a journalist asked "Are you a fascist filmmaker?" — prompting Snyder's "I'm a tiny bit of both" reply.
- Snyder defended the film's violence toward women, saying "the violence toward women and men is equal" and "the meaning is that violence doesn't work and doesn't get anything done."
- Snyder drew a hard line on AI in filmmaking: "the people have to be real," while acknowledging uncertainty about whether AI is already being used inside VFX pipelines to swap in CG props.
- Christopher Nolan showed Snyder "The Odyssey" early and "loved it," per Snyder, though "he doesn't work like that" — the two never consulted on it.
Why it matters: Snyder's complaint is structural: 1,200 people saw the film at TIFF but "thousands" of commenters piled on, including one who admitted, "I haven't seen it yet but I'm sure it was horrible." For a filmmaker whose DC exit followed his daughter Autumn's 2017 suicide, this smaller, personal indie is being judged not on its own terms but as another node in a decade-long reputation war — which is exactly the cycle Snyder says he can't escape.
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