Oscars 2018 'Russia wants to hack the Oscars': smear campaign targets Syrian nominee Feras Fayyad, the film-maker behind Last Men in Aleppo, has become the subject of a vicious effort to discredit his work Feras Fayyad’s Oscar-nominated film has come under attack as ‘western propaganda’. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/APThe film-maker behind the Oscar-nominated documentary Last Men in Aleppo has been targeted by a smear campaign that seeks to paint him as a terrorist sympathiser in the run up to the Academy Awards. “It is like Russia wants to hack the Oscars like they hacked the US election,” he told the Guardian. Other Oscar-nominated film-makers and Academy members say the campaign could affect Fayyad’s chances of winning the award. Chris Hegedus, who made Oscar-nominated documentary The War Room, described the articles as “outrageous” and said that they “made us see how Russia and others are meddling beyond social media and political elections”.

Source: The Guardian February 06, 2018 10:52 UTC