Interview: Asif Kapadia Breaks Down His Genre-Bending Venice Entry ‘2073,’ AI, and Why He Cast Samantha Morton

British director Asif Kapadia has a penchant for the tragedy; his works include a triple threat of documentaries on icons – the tragic loss of Amy Winehouse in Academy Award-winning Amy, F1 driver Ayrton Senna’s fateful crash with Senna, and the rise and fall of Argentine footballer Diego Maradona in Diego Maradona. His first feature The Warrior features a disillusioned warrior (the late, great Irrfan Khan) who watches his son get murdered, while the tragedy of his directorial work on Netflix’s Mindhunter might just be that we’ll never get season four of the hit show. But Kapadia has his eyes set on a different tragedy with his latest movie, the time-jumping docufiction 2073. 

Not one of a pop star losing their life amidst an abusive, financially-predatory father but an angry tragedy of morality, one that we are all experiencing right here, right now. The film riffs on Chris Marker’s film La Jetée, where a man from after an apocalypse is sent back in time to find out how it occurred, with Kapadia framing 2073 in a similar fashion. The year is 2073 – as one might expect – and there has been an ‘event’. The world has fallen apart. Surveillance cameras watch your every move, the air acrid with bitter orange, a police state is in effect and eerily lifelike artificial intelligence robots infiltrate the social groups that still feel like forming. In the colon of a dilapidated shopping center, Ghost (Samantha Morton) lives, her squat a visual montage of a bygone era; Hokusai’s The Great Wave and other art are splayed out on her wall, a deck of top trumps is stuffed into a corner. Ghost is mute, her life tragic and painful enough to render her silent but she ponders – over a voiceover – how she, and the world, arrived at this point. 

Kapadia then sends audiences down a time vortex as an emerald green timestamp races backwards to 1990. The apocalyptic world of 2073 is then intersected with a montage of archive footage from that time and onwards to 2024; of dictators enforcing authoritarianism, of slimy politicians like Nigel Farage brazen lies about Brexit, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and a whole vipers nest of toxic billionaires exerting their power and influence across the world, interviews with once-arrested journalists. Juxtaposing these with newspaper headlines and clips from social media, cut together like Kapadia is on a sugar rush of anger, of events from across time to indicate the beginning of generative AI usage, the rise of Donald Trump, 9/11, the Israeli/Palestine genocide, the financial crash of 2007 and film clips from Alfonso Cuaron’s now all too relevant Children of Men and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report.

At the 81st Venice Film Festival, I spoke with Asif Kapadia about how he went about choosing the clips for 2073, how the events within Minority Report come full circle to casting Samatha Morton and why he omitted the inclusion of current activists such as Just Stop Oil, who are challenging the impending, hopeless doom he sees for society.

Connor Lightbody: I want to know how you went about choosing the images for the film, specifically that of Minority Report?

Asif Kapadia: I’ll start on that. Whatever happened I knew that it was going to be a doc. It was going to be a lot of material and it was going to be global. I didn’t want it to be about one country, one person. So it was breaking the rules, right? Normally films are about a single person – particularly now everyone is a biography about someone. So I’m like, everyone’s doing that. I’ve done that, I know how to do it. I’ve done some really good ones so let’s not do that. Let’s make it more difficult by making it a global film about what’s going on. It’s quite heavy going through all that material. It’s going to be quite fast. It’s going to have a certain pace for it to hit you in the stomach. So then there was going to be a drama element. I always  liked the idea of playing with genre. My first film, The Warrior, was a Western. Senna was an action film. Amy, a musical. Diego Maradona is a gangster film. I’m like, okay, I’ve never done sci-fi. Let’s do a Sci-Fi doc made with archive footage. I didn’t know how we’re going to do it but a part of the genre is in character and voice over – an internal monologue which is kind of part of the whole scifi thing. I always knew I wanted to cast a brilliant actor. I didn’t realize that at the time, that even when an actor doesn’t even speak, that became part. So the monologue is important. So I’ve got to have a brilliant actor who can carry off without saying a word and Samantha [Morton] is incredible and amazing. I always wanted to cast someone who has been working in film and TV for a long time so that they become a part of the archive. So that was the idea that was always right there from the beginning. Whoever I cast, it can’t be just some brilliant new actor who’s not got a history. And Samantha has got a history. Her husband is an archivist. So when I spoke to her after we shot the film and said what I wanted, he had all of this old material. So that’s where we are playing with time anyway, having little moments when you see her young and then you have a little sequence, a little montage, like a nightmare. And so that’s how that came about.

CL: So how do you go about choosing the images throughout? A specific image that I wanted to discuss was the clip of the woman in the wedding dress in Beirut. That was a factory explosion. I was just wondering what the creative intent was in that?

AK: There is footage from about 50 or 60 countries in the film and that was something that my editor Chris King found. It was just this idea of things happening globally around the world that affect people and it was there as just a general feeling. It is quite a shocking piece of footage that is not that well known and quite recent. It’s just the kind of contrast I suppose, where it was the power of one shot. You start off on a closeup of a woman in a wedding dress and then you have no idea where it’s going to end up. And that’s a part of what we do. A lot of research and a lot of archives. We see millions of shots eclipsed, chuck it all into our system, and then we go through and pick certain images to kind of give. And sometimes you might know where it’s from and sometimes you might not know. Sometimes you might remember it and sometimes you remember someone saying that thing. Other times you’d forgotten you knew that and that was all part of it. But that was part of the kind of global nature of the film. A shocking event that happened that killed thousands. 

CL: When you’re piecing these clips together, do you focus on what the audience’s emotional response will be or what the image represents? At this stage in your career, is it just instinct?

AK: I have a brilliant editor, brilliant team of researchers that I worked with. The researchers were new on this film, so it was really hard at the start. Honestly, we started this film in Lockdown, so we weren’t even talking face to face, right? It was like a year and a half, two years where no one met. We didn’t have an office. We were just collecting footage off social media and saving it and just saying one day, maybe this clip, what about this? What about this? So I was just looking at stuff and going save that, save that, save that, save that. So there’s the instinct part. Then it was that something might have happened in the US, something happened in Brazil, something happened in India, something happened in France, something happened in the UK. It might be environmental or it might be political, it might be the police beating someone up or shooting someone. It was just this idea that this is all becoming normal. It is that very dystopian feeling of being locked in your house with all this material is out there and I’m just sort of getting it on a phone. The whole thing is crazy and all I had to go with to start with. That process number one is collecting archives that emotionally grabs you. I don’t really care about it being technically perfect. If it’s emotionally strong, that’s the thing. Something happens in it. It may be a political speech, it may be a lie that we know a politician has said, one that everyone kind of laughed off. But it was an important lie that led to something that happened. And then I started interviewing journalists on Zoom. One of the very first zooms I ever did was with Carol Cadwalladr. The reason why she’s in the kitchen is because it’s Lockdown. The first interview I did with Rana [Ayyub], she’s just in a room. I spoke to experts – remember how politicians say no one cares about experts anymore. Well I care about experts. I interviewed a lot of people and those interviews then formed the research of what else I would start looking for. Then we just started cutting it and putting it all together. It went from thousands of hours, reduced down to these sequences where we focus on politics and authoritarianism and surveillance and the climate and the tech bros. We ended up losing certain sequences, but the ones left felt like they covered the biggest issues. Like democracy is under attack, surveillance is playing a big part in our lives and we don’t quite understand what we’re giving away. Then what’s happening with technology and who’s in charge? Then also what’s happening to the planet. These became the main themes.

CL: It sounds like you probably have enough footage for a documentary on each topic.

AK: Yes, and most people would do that. Many films have been made about the climate, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’d go and see it. That was part of the challenge of the “how can I make something that is heavy and that hits you”. I’m not particularly brilliant at watching series. So if it was like a five part series, would I get to the end? Probably not so I’m going to make this quite a short film. I wanted it to be a short, sharp punch to the stomach and I’ll throw you back out into the daylight. Then I just want you to look at the world slightly differently and go like, what is going on? Are we cool with this? What can we do? And then that will be a question to ask ourselves after.

CL: Is that why there’s no ray of hope in there? In the UK recently, we’ve had a lot of protests happening, there is Just Stop Oil.

AK: But what happened to them? They were doing a Zoom call about stopping traffic. Do you know what happened to them?

CL: They went to prison. 

AK: Yes. 21 years for a Zoom call – talking about it! they hadn’t even done it! If that isn’t Minority Report? How do you get put away for 21 years for talking about stopping traffic? What if they didn’t turn up? Meanwhile, all of those protests were happening where you live, where I live, all around the country only two, three weeks ago and they got less time for actually attacking the police, for actually burning down buildings. They got less time than people doing a Zoom call where they talked about stopping traffic.

CL: It’s just unfathomable.

AK: Yes. In a way, that’s the point of the film, isn’t it? It is already dystopian. The reason why the film doesn’t have a neat ending or is hopeful is because I don’t feel particularly hopeful right now. 

CL: Yeah, neither do I.

AK:: There we go. So we agree. So why? I don’t want the audience to feel comfortable at the ending. I want people to feel uncomfortable. Movies, like dramas…some of my favorite films make me feel really uncomfortable. But you don’t ever say to Michael Haneke “yeah, but why don’t you just have a little comedy at the ending? Michael, what’s wrong with you? When you do that film about the Holocaust, can’t you put a gag in why people don’t say that?”. But then that idea of when I read a novel or I look at a painting, they’re like, yeah, but where’s the joy? Their art doesn’t have to do that. Documentaries I think have been put in a box and I don’t want to be in that box. So I consciously wanted to break the rules of what docs do, which is what I tried to do with Senna without ‘Talking Heads’. When I made The Warrior, my first film, not making a film in English as British. I break the rules, that’s my job. And in this one I was like, I’m going to mix the genre, but I also want you to feel uncomfortable because it really is scary out there and it is more scary for certain people and they don’t have the power to make a film. They don’t have a voice. They’re the ones who are under attack. So I am lucky enough to be in a position, I guess, where I can make a film. I don’t have a boss. I don’t have anyone telling me what I can do or can’t do. A lot of my friends are worried about what’s happening, that they may work for an organization and they’ve been told “you’re not allowed to do a retweet, or you’re not allowed to say that and if you do, look at your contract, you’ll be fired. That wasn’t around before. But it’s really everywhere now, isn’t it? Everywhere. People are being told what they can and cannot say. It used to be that this is a personal account, this is my work account. There’s no personal anymore, it’s like we own you. You’re not allowed an opinion. You’re not allowed to say something political unless you support us. And so it is scary.

CL: It’s a very angry film. I came out of it angry but not angrier than I already was. I didn’t feel like I was the audience for the film. Who is your audience? 

AK: I think you are because we’ve just talked about things that you’ve said.  I think honestly the audience for the film is anyone who cares, who has a heart. That’s the thing. I’m not going to pick and choose who the audience is because I think this is happening to all of us. You might think it’s not your problem but it’s coming your way. At some point it’s going to come to your loved ones, it’s going to come to your friends. It’s going to come to a person who runs a shop down the street. So I feel like it is our problem. So you are the audience. Because I also think about our industry being very conservative and people have been warned about what you’re allowed to say, not allowed to say, what you can write about. You are just like me. We’re just humans and AI is coming. We’re going to be jobless. And it didn’t really exist when I started the film, right? As I started making this film, that came along and bloody hell. And there are no laws. There are no rules. What we say in the film a few years ago is what’s happening now. Every creative person, every single one of us could potentially be out of a job if certain people have their way. Why deal with moody directors? Why do we need journalists? When you can just get computer to write this off.

CL: But we need human oversight over this technology.

AK: Right? We do. But it might just be like how now when you go to the supermarket, there’s someone there when the red light goes off to come in to fix it. But you do it all yourself and then they charge you. That could be journalism.

CL: I have seen clips from America where the self-service has a tip option and it’s like, who are you tipping there?

AK: Mad. I mean, honestly, this film is me going, am I crazy? Is this all happening and we’re not doing anything? So it almost became an act of therapy to talk to other people and say, am I crazy? No, you’re not crazy. This shit is happening. And like you say, if someone says, well, we brought AI in to do that, and no one can say that might be a bad idea because when it learns enough, there’s no one left to say that it’s bad. 

CL: The same with the recent deep fake usage in Alien Romulus, who is there to say that is bad? Who’s telling them?

AK:  I’m very aware of the sort of power structures within our industry and people are afraid to say certain things. And people know that if you want to keep working, you should give that one a good review and then you’ll get to go on that event. That’s the constant battle.

CL: So why 1990? 

AK: Because you don’t want to go too far back. It seemed like there were two events that happened. 1990 is actually the hopeful moment. 1990 is where Mandela gets released from prison and he becomes president. The Berlin war comes down, the breakup of U-S-S-R, and there’s democracy around the world, which is meant to be great and save everyone basically around that period. You have a lot of Latin American countries that come out of dictatorship. Anne Applebaum, the journalist at that point is saying, we thought things were going to get better but actually we are now in a democratic recession.

So the idea was that everything is going to get better. Even I naively thought things would just keep getting better. But then what happened? We mentioned it in the film: two things, 9/11 and the financial crash. These are the two big events that kind of change the world in a way. And that creates the system in which these populist leaders step in and blame immigration. Meanwhile billionaires can keep making their money and never pay tax and live offshore or whatever. So that is the kind of process of dividing and lying and cheating. So that was why we went. I didn’t want to go back to the 1930s. I was around and I remember that period and thinking all this stuff is happening. I was there protesting against the apartheid in South Africa. I was there protesting about certain policies that came with Margaret Thatcher in the UK. I was there fighting against the Iraq war. I was at these protests. Now, if I go to a protest, I could get prosecuted. Or even if you’re just even thinking about having a protest, you go to jail for five years. That’s where we’ve gone. Now if you have a Zoom call, you could go to jail.

2073 had its world premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival where it played in competition. NEON will release the film theatrically in the U.S.