Asif Kapadia doesn't want to leave saving the planet to Gen Z: 'We're the grown ups!'

Oscar-winning director behind Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse documentaries says new film, 2073, is a cautionary tale of our near future

British director Asif Kapadia's 2073 premiered last week at the Venice International Film Festival. EPA

Hope is in short supply in Asif Kapadia’s new film, 2073, a drama-documentary about the state of the planet.

“I'm a genuinely positive person, but I'm not particularly hopeful about what I'm seeing,” Kapadia tells The National during the Venice Film Festival. “I have this feeling of unease.”

He’s not the only one documenting the possible return of fascism, the erosion of democracy and the horrors of climate change, the speculative fiction-documentary hybrid film bleakly projects fifty years into the future, looking at what the world might be like.

The British film director, whose works include Amy, the Oscar-winning documentary about the late singer Amy Winehouse, and the acclaimed Senna, on the legendary Formula One driver, chose the year 2073 because he began to worry about the fate of his teenage kids. “[I started to think] ‘What the hell is the world going to look like if I don’t do anything, if I don't say anything?’” he says.

The impact of his film clearly had the desired effect. When critics emerged from the first press screening, some were visibly shaken, in tears and hugging those next to them. While the film rounds up experts to talk politics and the environment, it also features Samantha Morton playing a woman living in 2073, in a post-apocalyptic environment, scavenging to survive.

Inspired by Chris Marker’s legendary photo-led futuristic short La Jetee, Kapadia wanted to make his version of a dystopian drama. “It always felt like, in my head, this is going to be my excuse to make a sci-fi,” he says. “I also knew there’s no way I’m gonna get $100 million to make this, but I can make a doc.”

For Kapadia, it became all about joining the dots, rather than focusing on one particular topic. “I didn't have a list of what I wanted to make a film about. Also, I'll be honest, if someone said, ‘Oh, Asif is making a film about the climate’, I don't know if I'd go and watch it, right? Obviously, it’s important. But would I go and see it?”

Likewise, he didn’t want to make a film about former British prime minister Boris Johnson or any other politician or plutocrat. “They’re narcissistic psychopaths. They want people to make films about him. I don’t want to do that.”

The idea began percolating in Kapadia's mind in 2016 when the UK voted to leave the EU. “I was like, ‘What the heck is going on? Has everyone gone mad?” he says. “Why would you vote for something to make your life worse? Why would you vote to take away your own freedom? Why would you vote to be poorer? Why would you vote to restrict yourself?’”

This snowballed when he arrived in Pittsburgh to make episodes of the David Fincher-produced serial killer series Mindhunter during the 2016 election race, in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the White House. There, in the swing state of Pennsylvania, he observed a groundswell of support for Trump.

“I was telling all of my American friends, I think Trump's going to win. And no one believed it would happen,” the director adds. Together with the rise of billionaires like X owner Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the aggressive actions of warring world leaders and others, Kapadia boiled it down to a triangle: social media, climate and the destruction of democracy.

“Everyone I spoke to said ‘You can’t understand an authoritarian, how they got in power, if you don’t understand how the information about them was given, or lies were spread.”

Now 52, Kapadia doesn’t want to simply entrust saving the planet to Gen Z. “We’re the grown-ups. Within our own industries, we should do something and speak up, because all you can do is deal with yourself, deal with the people around you, in your home, your family, your circle of friends, and then your industry,” he says.

He also knows that the far right targets young, impressionable minds, while students are frequently shut down. “They get kicked off their courses. They get beaten up, shot or bombed.” It’s a long way from 1968 when student protests dominated Europe. “So '68 is like another planet to now. Literally, if you say something, you go to jail.”

When asked what he hopes to achieve with the film, he shrugs and says, “I don’t know”, before launching into a considered answer. “I like films where you have people in the room, and then afterwards, you have a conversation about it.”

Since the pandemic, he feels such debate has been lost with people increasingly left isolated. “There’s got to be some collective community thing that we used to have, that I think has slightly got lost, or people don’t want to happen, because you just want to sit at home in your house where you order everything and get [it] sent to your door.”

Visibly emotional, seemingly holding himself back from ranting further, he adds: “And I don’t like that.”