CANNES, France — Director Steven Spielberg was put on the spot Saturday at Cannes Film Festival when asked about children's author Roald Dahl's purported anti-Semitic views.
Spielberg is unveiling his Walt Disney adventure story The BFG, which is based on Dahl's 1982 children's book. Dahl is also the author of such beloved stories as James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
A journalist asked Spielberg if he was aware of Dahl's alleged anti-Semitic statements.
Following Dahl's death in 1990, Abraham Foxman, at the time the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote that the author was "a blatant and admitted anti-Semite."
Spielberg, director of the Holocaust film Schindler's List and founder of the USC Shoah Foundation, which preserves interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, responded that he "wasn't aware of any of Roald Dahl's personal stories" when he took on the project.
"I was focused on the story (Dahl) wrote," said Spielberg. "I had no idea of anything that was purportedly assigned to him, that he might have said."
But Spielberg added that the story about an orphan girl who discovers a big, friendly giant, had an overwhelmingly positive message, which he incorporated in the film (in theaters July 1).
"This is a story about embracing our differences," said Spielberg. "The values in the book and in the film, those are the values I wanted to impart in the telling of this story."
