The last decade or so of American politics has inspired a lot of political statements from the people of Hollywood, who are pretty clearly as freaked out by what feel like ongoing and inexorable shifts toward both national and global authoritarianism as the rest of us. But few have been as blunt about it as Giancarlo Esposito was this week, stepping up on his soapbox at the Sundance Film Festival and declaring, “This is time for a revolution—and they don’t even know that’s what they’re starting.”
Esposito, at the festival to promote his new Jon Turturro movie The Only Living Pickpocket In New York, did not mince words or suggest he was being metaphorical in his language, drawing direct parallels between regimes in Russia, Iran, and the United States in his words to Variety: “We have to stand up to it. They can’t take us all down. If the whole world showed up on Putin’s doorstep or the Iranians’ doorstep or in Washington, they’d kill 500 or 50 million or however [many], but the rest of us would survive with a new [world].”
Esposito was one of several stars wearing “ICE Out” pins at Sundance, referencing widespread discontent with both the nationwide emboldening of Immigration Customs and Enforcement in the second Trump administration, and the more specific violence happening in Minneapolis over the last several weeks. “Some very rich old white men are exerting their power to suppress our own people,” Esposito added, “Thus creating a feeling of civil war in the streets, preparing the haters to hate, teaching them how to shoot. This is all a preparation for a very insidious problem that’s happening in our world. And for me, I have to speak out. We will not be ICE’d out. This is not going to happen.”
Esposito isn’t the only star to speak out at Sundance: Elijah Wood, for instance, was quoted at a protest that broke out in Park City back on Sunday, organized in response to the killing of Alex Pretti in the Minnesota capital on Saturday. (Wood: “The folks who have been unlawfully gunned down in Minnesota—it’s awful. Here we are at this film festival that is about bringing people together; it’s about telling stories from all over the world. We’re not divided here; we’re coming together.”) Natalie Portman, Natasha Lyonne, Olivia Wilde, Tatiana Maslany, and more have sported the ICE Out pins, and spoken publicly about their unhappiness with the current regime and the ongoing violence.