When Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties (also known as Mignonnes) played at the Sundance Film Festival, it won an award for Best Directing in the World Cinema Dramatic section. Before the movie had even premiered on Netflix, though, it was already garnering significant controversy for the company, and prompted a public apology a day after the company’s poster and official description went viral on social media.
“We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties,” Netflix posted to its official Twitter account. “It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.”
This was the poster that drew so much attention online:
Some noted that the Netflix poster was significantly different than the original French poster:
As for the descriptions, the original one from Netflix read, “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.” The film’s official page on Netflix now reads “Eleven-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.”
Reviews out of Sundance called Cuties a “captivating but structurally shaky first feature” and that “the sight of twerking pre-teen bodies is explicitly designed to shock mature audiences into a contemplation of today’s destruction of innocence.” Viewers will get a chance to watch Cuties on Netflix starting on September 9.