It’s been just over a week since IndieWire visited the historic Bruin Theatre in Westwood, Los Angeles, where a small team of four film enthusiasts recently set out to restore the 1937 movie palace by October.
IndieWire has learned they’re already fracturing — with at least two people now exiting the project amid allegations facing Rui Pereira, the Canadian theater operator who signed the Bruin’s lease back in July.
The allegations currently destabilizing the new L.A. revival project originated thousands of miles away, and years before Pereira set his sights on Westwood. Pereira began operating Toronto’s independent Kingsway Theatre in 2009 and later reopened the city’s historic Humber Cinema in 2011, where a dispute with his landlord ultimately landed in court before the theater closed and was demolished years later.
Across those years, Pereira’s conduct generated controversies and public disputes throughout Toronto’s film community. And in recent weeks, concerns about that history — including accusations of nonpayment and unlicensed screenings at the Kingsway — have traveled west through something of an industry whisper network, increasingly spilling into public view.
At the center of these claims is a pattern of alleged online harassment, bullying, and intimidation, described to IndieWire by more than a dozen sources who encountered Pereira over the years.
The Kingsway operator is accused of making racist, antisemitic, and other inflammatory remarks — with screenshots reviewed by IndieWire showing the Canadian theater’s verified account calling people “fake Jews,” “sub human devils,” and “murderous filthy vile hasbara fake Jew scumbags.” He is accused of telling one user to “Go back to Poland”; and responding to a photograph depicting a swastika painted outside a Jewish family’s home by calling it “the proper symbol for zionazis.”
Pereira categorically denied the allegations of racism and antisemitism in an email to IndieWire; he also denied allegations of unlicensed film screenings, nonpayment, and other business disputes at the Kingsway, and rejected the broader characterization of his Toronto tenure as controversial. He maintained that legal matters involving both the Kingsway and his former Humber Cinema were either resolved or confidential, and characterized attempts to generate controversy around his theaters as “dishonest and disingenuous.”
“Any accusations of racial discrimination or the use of the blanket term of antisemitism against the Kingsway Theatre are completely false,” he said. Pereira attributed the accusations to what he described as online harassment directed at the Kingsway and its staff during screenings of the Palestinian films “No Other Land” and “Palestine 36.”
Sources also described to IndieWire direct threats and an alarming pattern of retaliation in which Pereira allegedly continues targeting some critics online for months and, in some cases, even years after their initial disputes.
One controversy centering race that Pereira and the Kingsway have continued to revisit online dates back to 2017, when Canadian actress Oluniké Adeliyi accused the theater of racial discrimination after Pereira called police during a dispute over its backpack policy. Pereira denied that race played any role in the incident at the time and called Adeliyi’s account a “false narrative.” (The actress did not respond to IndieWire’s request for comment.)
IndieWire has reviewed screenshots of the Kingsway account repeatedly mocking Adeliyi’s career as recently as last week. And, in a screenshot from 2024, the same account tagged Adeliyi in a post resurfacing what was then a seven-year-old news story about the Kingsway dispute, asking her, “How is the ‘acting’ going?”
That’s after years of other remarks about Black people have been attributed to the verified Kingsway account. In screenshots reviewed by IndieWire, the account told one user that “Non plantation ‘blacks’ are not welcome”; told actor Tim Russ, “You were a KING on VOYAGER now you are back on the plantation”; and told journalist Don Lemon, “Trump is definitely more black than you.”
In another exchange beneath a photograph of 2024 U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the Kingsway account asked, “Which of the two is black?” And in a screenshot showing remarks from August 3, 2024, the Kingsway replied to then-Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, asking, “How is the anal rape club going?”
The controversy reached the Bruin’s own social media account over the weekend
On the night of Friday, August 21, an anonymous account on X (username: brunometti) struck a match that resulted in a conflict between Pereira and 26-year-old theater activist Ben Steinberg, an L.A. local and former collaborator on the Bruin Theatre restoration project. The anonymous account resurfaced old Canadian news coverage, circulated screenshots from the Kingsway’s social media history, and raised concerns about Pereira’s alleged racism and antisemitism.
Three reply posts came within minutes of each other from the Bruin’s official X account. After the anonymous user warned that Pereira was “coming to Los Angeles,” calling him a “monster” and urging people in Los Angeles to research his Toronto theater, the official Bruin account replied with the Kingsway’s location: “Danforth and Dawes Rd right next to Shoppers World!” Then, in response to the accusation that Pereira was antisemitic, the Bruin account tagged Steinberg’s popular Save Your Cinema campaign and replied: “You mean anti-septic?”
When IndieWire contacted Steinberg via email on Monday to ask who had made the posts and why they’d been deleted, he went on record distancing himself from both Pereira’s actions and the statements made through the Bruin account. By Tuesday, Steinberg had left the project and announced his departure through Save Your Cinema on X. Pereira did not respond to IndieWire’s inquiry about whether he had authored those three posts.
“Rui posted it and I deleted it,” Steinberg told IndieWire. “Rui has access to all of the accounts except for Instagram. I have access to FB, X, and IG. I did not authorize it.” He continued: “The posts made on the Bruin social media page do not represent me.” Steinberg said the three X posts were “deleted immediately,” but did not expand on his characterization that they were “unauthorized.” He then told IndieWire to contact other people working at the Bruin individually for their views on the controversy.
With Pereira still operating the Kingsway in Canada (he did not respond to questions about the future of the Kingsway, when asked by IndieWire), Steinberg has overseen much of the Bruin’s public-facing media presence since July. Both parties now characterize his relationship to the Bruin project as that of a volunteer.
“Ben Steinberg is not directly involved in the reopening of the Bruin Theater other than in his help taking photos and setting up some of the internet items,” Pereira told IndieWire over email, singling out the Bruin’s Instagram account. “Ben is not an employee but his enthusiasm and encouragement have been very helpful.” Pereira separately told IndieWire that Steinberg was “never paid.”
That contrasts somewhat with how Steinberg’s role had previously been presented publicly. Steinberg told IndieWire he met Pereira online, and when IndieWire visited the Bruin on August 17 (Pereira was not present), flyers taped inside the theater’s windows presented what was broadly understood as the project’s core team at that time. The print-outs advertised Pereira as “proprietor,” Steinberg as “media,” Bay Theatre operator Peter Kunellis as “operations,” and theater historian Bill Counter also as “operations.” The latter two L.A. locals remain at the Bruin working with “multiple contractors,” per Pereira.
“I was not aware of any allegations made against [Pereira],” Steinberg told IndieWire. “I was not aware of any reports about Toronto people boycotting his theater. I did not have time to investigate him. I am a film university student preparing for my career. He was a new introduction to me. I knew nothing of any Canadian accusations. I received no warnings from either inside or outside the Bruin operations.”
Steinberg said he spoke to Pereira about the viral allegations against him briefly over the weekend, but also said that he and Pereira had never met in person. That’s also true for Edwin Gomez, an L.A. repertory-film enthusiast and ex-volunteer at the Bruin who also walked away after the recent dispute.
“My involvement with the theater is no longer going to happen. I can’t be involved with that at all,” Gomez told IndieWire, citing the allegations of racism and antisemitism facing Pereira online.
Gomez was previously interviewed at the Bruin when IndieWire stopped by last week, and in a later conversation, said he got paid $100 to wear a bear suit promoting Pereira’s theater during a “Fast and Furious” anniversary event at the Directors Village across the street. Steinberg said in an email to IndieWire that his role was entirely voluntary and that he expected no compensation before the theater reopened, although he was ultimately paid $100 for helping with the bear-costume promotion.
Like Steinberg, Gomez said he met Pereira online and knew nothing about his history in Toronto when he got involved with the L.A. project. After seeing screenshots of those three responses from the Bruin account, Gomez called the conduct “totally unprofessional and unacceptable.”
“It was very embarrassing,” Gomez said. “It was very strange that he did that on the theater account.”
Also on Monday, Counter — who previously spoke with IndieWire during our August 17 tour of the Bruin — distanced himself from any management role or knowledge of Pereira’s media strategy. “I’m just helping out, exploring the theatre for my own amusement, and trying to solve a few equipment mysteries,” Counter told IndieWire. “I’m not in a management position on this project.”
Counter, Gomez, and Steinberg all separately confirmed they had discussed the allegations facing Pereira on Monday. (Both Gomez and Steinberg indicated Kunellis was also present, but Kunellis did not respond to IndieWire’s multiple requests for comment.) Gomez described the group as “disturbed” by the news around Pereira and said that their conversation, which happened inside the theater, ultimately centered on a grim question: could the controversy itself jeopardize the Bruin’s reopening?
“‘Oh great, we’re going to lose this theater,’” Gomez recalled of the group’s reaction. “‘This theater is not going to open with all this stuff that this guy has for history. It’s not a very good look.’”
The disagreement may be new in Los Angeles, but the allegations confronting Pereira are not — raising a larger question than who posted what from the Bruin’s official X account last Friday.
If this history was already publicly available, how did it factor into the decision-making that led Pereira to lease one of Los Angeles’ most iconic movie theaters, particularly after filmmaker Jason Reitman’s previous attempt failed? And why did none of these allegations break through to the public last month?
The episode also raises concerns about Pereira’s judgment as he pushes toward an already-announced October reopening of the historic L.A. building thousands of miles from his longtime home in Toronto. The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety has not yet produced records IndieWire requested concerning the theater’s recent permits, inspections, code enforcement, occupancy, and work required before reopening.
On August 25, the department said it needed additional time to process the request because of “unusual circumstances,” including the need to collect records from separate facilities and examine a “voluminous amount” of material.
Those questions carry additional weight because the Bruin has already proved a difficult theater to revive. IndieWire previously reported that Jason Reitman and his partners walked away from their Bruin lease after extensive due diligence uncovered what they described as more restoration needs than they had anticipated — ending in a dispute over a multimillion-dollar repair estimate that wound up in court.
The new Bruin team under Pereira is taking a very different approach, which may yet work out. But the situation has already cost the project two of its earliest and most enthusiastic supporters.
In his email to IndieWire, Pereira said, “This is a movie theatre not a place of conflict. The Kingsway Theatre has no association with any other cinema or entities. There are no controversies and any attempt to generate them is dishonest and disingenuous. The Bruin Theater is a gift, not only to Los Angeles, but the world – a cultural heritage site that unites generations of movie goers in the experience of cinema.”
Pereira continued, “I am reopening the Bruin Theater because it needs to be done.”