Former United States President Barak Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama produced and consulted on a fictional apocalyptic movie titled, Leave the World Behind that features a scene warning to not trust white people.
The movie, which is being featured on Netflix, “follows two families forced to work together” after a cyberattack that shuts down the entire country’s electric grid, forcing the families to “decide how best to survive the potential crisis, all while grappling with their places in the collapsing world,” according to Newsweek.
The former president wrote a bestselling memoir and founded a production company with his wife called Higher Ground, to “touch on issues of race and class, democracy and civil rights,” Newsweek reported. “The former president and first lady signed on to produce [“Leave the World Behind”] last year, and as part of the deal, Obama was able to share his perspective on the events that unfolded on screen.”
The Obamas provided movie notes for the director, Sam Esmail, and reportedly told him that the script was “fairly close” to how a nationwide crisis would actually play out in the modern-day. “And we shouldn’t wait around until the catastrophe happens—the work begins now. I think [Obama] would say the same thing,” Esmail told Vanity Fair.
The director said that former President Obama was able to “ground [him] a little bit on how things might unfold in reality,” adding, “I’m trying to keep [the film] as true to life as possible, but I’m exaggerating and dramatizing. And to hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details … I thought I was off by a lot! The fact that he said that scared the f**k out of me.”
Though the former commander-in-chief consulted the filmmaker on making the movie more realistic, Esmail told Vanity Fair that most of former President Obama’s notes and suggestions “stemmed from what he’d observed about human nature, particularly the way fissures form between people who might otherwise find common cause.”
Despite the many big names associated with the production of this film, one scene in particular has received most of the media attention. In a clip widely shared and criticized on social media, one of the main characters told the other, “I’m asking for you to remember that if the world falls apart, trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially White people.”
One social media user who claimed to have watched the film said that it was “Liberal garbage on steroids.” Another commented, “Cancel your Netflix, cancel your cable TV service, let them play in their bubble,” others agreed.
