Lil Nas X’s Toronto Film Festival documentary premiere delayed due to threat from a ‘passerby,’ police say
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — Lil Nas X’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere for his documentary “Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero” was delayed Saturday while police investigated a threat in the area, officials confirmed to CNN on Sunday.
“Yesterday, at the TIFF, a passerby uttered a threat towards private security. Out of an abundance of caution, the Toronto Police and the private security swept the scene and cleared within 20 minutes. The threat was general and did not target any one person,” Victor Kwong, Media Relations Officer for the Toronto Police Service told CNN in a statement.
Alejandra Sosa, a spokesperson for the festival, told CNN in a statement Sunday staff were “made aware by the Toronto Police Service of an investigation in the vicinity of the red carpet for the ‘Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero’ screening.”
“Our standard security measures remained in place during this time and the screening commenced with a slight delay. To our knowledge, this was a general threat and not directed at the film or the artist,” the statement continued.
Officials did not further elaborate on the specifics of the threat.
The premiere took place at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall Saturday night, and was featured as one of the film festival’s gala screenings complete with a pre-screening red carpet.
The “Oldtown Road” rapper appeared on the red carpet once the threat was cleared and posed with some of his family members, according to a video he posted to his Instagram page.
Directed by Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel, “Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero” features footage of Lil Nas X “as he navigated the whirlwind of fame, creativity, and growing responsibility that came with his meteoric success,” according to an official synopsis.
The documentary “offers a joyous immersion in the world of a game-changing artist and the fans who’ve joined him in that change,” the synopsis continued. “To watch concertgoers express what it means to share space with a Black, gay superstar, with their fellow fans, and with thousands of families brought into their world through the power of pop music, is to capture a precious image of how transformation happens.”
The-CNN-Wire
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