Filmmakers who want to receive funding from the British Film Institute (BFI) will have to abandon an old trope, as the BFI will no longer fund movies featuring villains with scars, reports the Telegraph.
The move comes as the BFI backs Changing Faces’ #IAmNotYourVillain charitable campaign. The BFI is reportedly the first organization to support the project and is doing so in an effort to destigmatize facial disfigurements.
“Film is a catalyst for change,” said BFI Deputy CEO Ben Roberts, “and that is why we are committing to not having negative representations depicted through scars or facial difference in the films we fund.”