An indie filmmaker claimed the Malia Obama-directed Nike ad is “shockingly similar” to her own work. Taking to social media, Natalie Jasmine Harris accused the former White House resident of using her short film for inspiration in the campaign, created to highlight A’Ja Wilson and her new signature shoe in the empowering commercial.
On social media, Harris asserted that the social edit of the advert mimics her short film GRACE, which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, the same year Obama was at the event.
Natalie Jasmine Harris attends the Film Independent Artist Development Showcase at DGA Theater Complex on July 24, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Film Independent
“Been sitting with this for a while. My Sundance short film GRACE (shot brilliantly by Tehillah de Castro) was made with deep love and care,” explained Harris on X. “The social cut of the new @Nike commercial directed by Malia Obama (who was also at Sundance my year) feels shockingly similar to my work…”
She continued in a follow-up post, “I know art often overlaps, but moments like this hit hard when you’ve poured your heart into telling stories with care and barely get the recognition you deserve. If brands want a certain look, why not hire from the source instead of for name recognition?” and added tags for Nike and the WNBA star.
Harris further relayed her frustrations on Instagram, gathering her X posts as well as screenshots from the Nike ad and her film in one upload.
“I don’t have much else to say, besides that this is quite disheartening and disappointing,” she wrote in the caption. I’m constantly posting about how difficult it is to be an emerging filmmaker right now and sustain myself without benefitting from family connections, generational wealth, or nepotism… and then to see this just really gives me even less hope that this industry wants me to be here.”
Harris was accepted to the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship in 2024. According to the website, she is filmmaker from Maryland passionate about centering Black queer joy and girlhood in her work and has has directed shorts that have been acquired by HBO and played at the Sundance Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, Outfest, and more.
Per TheWrap, GRACE is is a dramatic Black Southern Gothic and queer short film set in the 1950s that explores the conflicts that religious traditions and rites of passage often present in relation to identity formation. It’s a film about faith, hot combs, peach picking, and summer love. It rewrites and rights the history validating that Queer Black women have always been here; thriving, existing and being.”
“I didn’t often see myself on screen growing up,” she explained to WTOP last year. “When I decided that I wanted to be a narrative filmmaker, I knew that I really wanted to help change some of the things that I noticed about storytelling and representation.”
View a trailer for GRACE above and read Natalie Jasmine Harris’ posts below.
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