Cineuropa sat down with renowned British filmmaker Asif Kapadia to discuss his latest, dystopian hybrid movie 2073 [+lire aussi :
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interview : Asif Kapadia
fiche film], which screened out of competition at Venice last year. The director brought it to the Millennium Docs Against Gravity festival along with his Oscar-winning doc Amy [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film], presented as part of the “Best of MDAG” sidebar.

2073 is set a few decades from now and mixes the fictionalised diary of a ghost (played by Samantha Morton, whose previous role in Minority Report provides some relevant context here) with real-life footage from Gaza, India, China, the USA and the UK as well as interviews with investigative journalists who report on the abuse of power. Kapadia shares where the film stems from, and why 2073 is not such a far cry from 2025.

Are you a pessimist or an optimist about the future?
Asif Kapadia: I'm an optimist – but I also see what's going on, so I’d say I’m very much a realist, too. This film draws heavily on my personal experience. I’m from the UK, but I come from a Muslim background, and my family is originally from India. I’ve been lucky to make films all over the world. I worked in Brazil before Bolsonaro came to power, and I could see how young people were looking for a strongman. Since my family is from Gujarat, I was aware of Modi back when he was still a regional politician. His rise came as a result of increasingly dividing Muslims and Hindus – and he eventually became prime minister. I also saw what was happening in the UK before Brexit, in the USA during Trump’s campaign, and in parts of Eastern Europe. I wondered if others noticed the same things I did. So, I started asking journalists about their experiences, and everyone said the same thing: something’s going on – and it’s not good. The common denominator was always tech. We’ve never had tools like these – tools that can be used to manipulate, divide, lie, confuse and erode trust in the news, in facts, in each other. We’ve all entered this post-truth era.

At the same time, social media can be helpful during protests – in Iran or during the Arab Spring.
Absolutely. Without people filming and sharing their own experiences, we wouldn't know what’s going on in Gaza, for example. But also, social media has changed from what it started off as. It used to be something that brought us all together. Now it’s a space that is there to make everyone angry and argumentative. Many people have left apps for that reason or have gone to other places, and it’s not the same, because everything becomes fragmented. The whole point is that we don’t have any shared experiences. And if we don’t, how do we know what is real, what is true? 

Your film shows how different regimes use similar strategies and that these crimes are not confined to a single country or region.
It’s a playbook, which they are copying and pasting from. Rana Ayyub, a journalist who is in our film, said, “It’s almost like they’re all in a WhatsApp group, where they brag, ‘Guess what I just did and got away with’.” This is what it feels like, and that’s what seems so strange. That’s where the film comes from – it seemed to be happening everywhere at the same time. When I interviewed people, I told them that throughout history, this has happened before. But they said that it really wasn’t the whole world. Even when there was a world war, the conflict wasn’t happening literally everywhere in a short space of time.

Let me repeat that I think it’s because tech is omnipresent. We’re giving access to it to our kids – or everyone, really. We share our information on social media. Nobody fully understood what they were giving up. And, of course, that is the classic thing: if you are giving something for free, you become the product.

2073 is also a dystopian film. Usually in this genre, there is either a wonderful vision of the future, involving space travel, or a dark image of what will happen to humankind. You show these two visions coexisting – a dystopia for the poor and a bright future for the rich.
I wanted to find a way to show these visions coexisting in one city. That's why it's set in an alternative version of San Francisco, which is where the tech elite are from, mostly. But it’s not that far removed from reality and the present day. In São Paulo, a crowded megacity, people with real wealth fly from one skyscraper to another in their helicopters. They never have to come down to street level. Also, there are people living underground already. I show real footage in the film – for example, from New York – so it’s not something I’ve invented. There are people in Turkey, people in Hungary, people in Eastern Europe, people in the Philippines, people all over Asia who presently exist underground because it's safer and warmer. They have water or a roof over their heads.

Also, in more and more places, militarised police are on the streets, and the idea of constantly being warned if you are illegal or if it’s forbidden for you to go somewhere has become more common for more people. What I show in the movie is fiction and it’s not fiction at the same time.