A movie from the leader of the anti-vaccine movement is set to create controversy when it screens at the Tribeca Film Festival next month.

On Monday, the annual springtime confab quietly announced that, amid a list of Hollywood-centric talks, it would screen a documentary titled “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.” The festival said that the film, a previously unknown production, draws a link between vaccines and autism and that the April 24 event would also feature “a conversation with creators and subjects of the film.”

Tribeca did not reveal the director. He is, it turns out, the highly controversial anti-vaccine activist Andrew Wakefield.

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"It's shocking," Michael Specter, a staff writer at the New Yorker who has studied and written extensively about the issue, said when asked in a phone interview Tuesday about the screening. "This is a criminal who is responsible for people dying. This isn't someone who has a 'point-of-view.’ It's comparable to Leni Riefenstahl making a movie about the Third Reich, or Mike Tyson making a movie about violence toward women. The fact that a respectable organization like the Tribeca Film Festival is giving Wakefield a platform is a disgraceful thing to do."

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Contacted by the Times, a Tribeca spokeswoman provided a statement about the decision to host the film and its director.

“Tribeca, as most film festivals, are about dialogue and discussion. Over the years we have presented many films from opposing sides of an issue. We are a forum, not a judge,” it read.

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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-anti-vaccine-andrew-wakefield-movie-tribeca-20160322-story.html