‘2073’: Asif Kapadia on Trump, AI and our looming dystopian future

Having premiered at the Venice Film Festival, competing in the 57th Sitges Film Festival next week, and screening at the BFILondon Film Festival this month, 2073 isn’t a documentary. Nor is it a science fiction film. It’s a warning.

Broadly inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée (which previously inspired Terry Gilliam for 12 Monkeys) and with overtones of Children of Men and even the 2000 AD comic Judge Dredd, Asif Kapadia – the British Oscar winning director behind Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona – delivers an unsettling commentary on the state of the world today… And what our future might look like if we don’t stop compartmentalizing current events.

2073 is a genre-bending synthesis of documentary and fiction, which offers a narrative framework set in a totalitarian future. There, Samantha Morton’s character lives underground alongside her fellow survivors since “The Event”, which took place in 2034. She sends a time capsule to the present: clips of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Viktor Orbán, Priti Patel, Rodrigo Duterte… The sanity-eroding rogues gallery that populate your newsfeed and make you question how humanity as a species got this bad.

Kapadia deftly knits together the real-life footage and establishes a cause-and-effect relationship between them. The “I hope someone finds this” message sent from the future warns us of what awaits us, should we fail to recognise the signs we see every day. The ultimate cautionary tale.

You won’t watch a bolder, more urgent or more distressing film this year.

Read our full review.

We sat down with Asif Kapadia to discuss 2073 – his reasons behind making it; his views on Trump’s chances of winning a second term in the White House; and how AI and the death of democracy co-exist and should scare us into taking action.

Euronews Culture: When did you first start working on 2073?

Asif Kapadia: When it comes to actually making it, it was around 2020, during lockdown. We were all stuck at home and it was dangerous to go out. And you’re looking at things happening… There were riots happening in the US. Black Lives Matter. Boris Johnson was in power… The whole world was shit. It felt really dystopian.

I was like: ‘There’s something weird is going on.’ And that’s when I started making it. I contacted journalists around the world that I really respected and because everyone was at home, they would just talk to me. I did Zoom calls, and asked them ‘What’s going on in your country?’ Some of them were political journalists, some of them were activists, some of them might be environmental, some of them might be tech people… It was very wide and I spoke to about 70 or 80 journalists.

This was at a time when politicians in the UK were saying ‘Oh, we’ve had enough of experts.’ And I don’t know about you, but I quite like experts.

Can’t get enough of them, personally.

Right! I like people who know what they’re talking about… Because I just have a gut feeling that something strange is going on. And it’s everywhere at the same time. This was my way at the time of seeing whether I was going crazy or whether there was something happening. That’s how it began.

Can you tell me more about the initial motivation for the film?

Honestly, that goes back a bit further to 2015-16 and Brexit. Or Brexshit, as it should be called. It was just the weirdest time in the UK, when you turned on the TV or the radio, and there’s some racist lying and not being questioned by the journalist or the presenter. This was weird. Then the vote happened. People were lied to, in my opinion. Lied to and tricked into voting for something that made their life worse.

Then I went off from London to the US because I was doing a TV show for David Fincher called Mindhunter, and so I was there for the whole of the US election. I was in Pittsburgh, a swing state. I was in the middle of it, watching Clinton and Trump, and I would say to everyone in America: ‘He’s gonna win. He’s gonna win…’ No one would believe me. No one in the industry that I knew thought Trump would win, because they all said ‘He’s an idiot.’

And then he wins…

Exactly. I was filming the next day. I remember seeing the atmosphere that I saw in London the day after Brexit.

Brexshit, you mean?

Sorry, you’re right. We rebranded. It was the same atmosphere I saw after Trump won. And friends of mine all over the world – Brazil, Italy, Germany… They were telling me similar horror stories… So this feeling for me started years ago – this feeling that the world has got into sync with the film that I was trying to make.

Before we talk more about the film, I have to ask at this point – what’s your gut feeling about Trump this time, with the November elections looming?

I don’t know. I don’t think he’s going to win, but I have to be honest – I’m not particularly a fan of Democratic policy. Particularly international policy. Also, I’m not living in the US, but I know my friends are very happy that they think the Democrats are going to win. But I’m looking at shit happening around the world that Biden is paying for, and I’m like ‘Well, what difference does it make?’ American foreign policy doesn’t seem to change, no matter who’s in power.

Depressing, isn’t it? Back to ‘2073’… It reminded me a lot of ‘Children of Men’ – just in hybrid documentary form.

That’s an amazing film, isn’t it? So, I started interviewing people, and then I started seeing and ripping things off the internet. Off TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the news… We also got lots of great, futuristic, dystopian movies. And we got documentaries… I would just collect this archive. I had a brilliant team of researchers. I knew the interviews were going to probably be off screen, in the style of the films that I’ve done before. But visually, I thought it would be good to do something different. In the past, I’ve made films with archives and there’ve been about a real person… But in this one, I’m going to have archive news, social media content, documentaries that have dealt with certain subjects, and drama that is sci-fi. I asked myself: ‘Can I use drama as archive?’ I always knew I’d probably shoot something because I had this material, and we started cutting it. We actually edited all the documentary sequences first and showed that part to people first.

Without the sci-fi drama framework?

That’s right.

That must have been a punishing watch!

Can you imagine? 20 minutes of like authoritarian rule. 20 seconds of black. 20 minutes of surveillance. Black. And so on… I showed it to a few people, and they were like: ‘For fuck’s sake! You really need the black bits!’ (Laughs) During the 20 seconds of black, you just heard people go: (sigh) ‘Oh shit…’

Yeah, a few seconds to let it settle how screwed we all are…

Yeah, and I really wanted to shock them. Now, I’m not pretending this is all footage you’ve never seen. That’s not the idea. You’ve seen it!

Yes, but we’re inundated with so much content that some of it disappears or gets lost in the mad shuffle…

Right! You see it, and you forget it, and you move on. And then you see another thing, and you go ‘That’s really awful’ and then you move on. My thought was to put that together – basically the last 10 years of our lives, all that all happened that somehow we’ve been able to compartmentalize… And we just get on with it because we have to get to our jobs, get to work, get on the subway, feed the kids… I wanted to do a reminder of that, but in order to deal with it, I needed to have a framing device – like with all of my films. So, Senna was an action film. Amy‘s a musical. Diego Maradona’s a gangster film. My first film, The Warrior, was a western. And this one is sci-fi.

It’s destabilizing, because you see recent news footage but it’s framed like a time capsule sent from the future.

Yes. For me, it was about somehow doing something to make people feel safe and comfortable, something that says ‘It’s all right, it’s all in the future’ – because people don’t mind watching dystopian horror or sci-fi. They enjoy it, walk out and get on with their lives. I thought ‘Let’s do the same, but the action scenes in this are all real.’ The most shocking stuff happened. You might have seen it, you might not. And this is even nowhere near the most shocking stuff I’ve seen. Believe me, I’ve made it much more easy for you to take than the stuff that I had seen over the years of creating this!

The film is already very intense because of the succession of clips about the destruction of democracy, surveillance state, the ecological disaster we’ve created and the rise to power of figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg… So that last statement fills me with dread, to be honest.

Sorry! But I knew there was always going to be a dramatic element, because I wanted a central character. I wanted someone for you to latch onto because all my other films had a biog element and a central character.

You also used voiceover this time, which is rare for you.

You’re right, I’ve never really used voiceover before in my drama or docs. But this time, I wanted to have a scripted voiceover. I like making documentaries because I can make them inside out and backwards. I start editing. Then I shoot something. Then I interview someone and then I shoot again and then I re-cut it… Whereas with drama, I always found the process very restrictive. And particularly if I wanted to do something like this. Plus, it’d be very expensive and you have to cast it, and you spend three years just waiting for an actor. I did this in a certain way when I just set deadlines. I spent a lot of time doing research, a lot of time editing, and then I just set a deadline saying: ‘We have to shoot by this date and therefore I have to cast it by this date, which means I need everyone to agree on the script by this date. I basically put a lot of pressure on the financiers and everyone! (Laughs)

You deal with a massive amount of material and information in this film. Regarding the editing process…

It’s really hard! (Laughs)

But intellectually speaking, how do you sort all this mess out?

I have an amazing editor, Chris King, and I give him quite a lot of control. He cut Senna, Amy, Maradona, the Banksy film… He’s hardcore and he’s also very smart. I collect everything and then I don’t tell him what to do. He just works his way through it and I do lots of interviews and I just chuck it at him and run away! Normally, I would do lots of work and then an editor would come on board. On this one, because there’s thousands of hours of footage, I brought on Chris really early, and he just started chopping.

This film is unusual, because I actually had two editors. Chris, who’s brilliant at cutting archive, but he’s not so experienced at doing drama. It’s a very different art form. And then when I shot the drama, I got another editor, Sylvie Landra, who cut The Fifth Element for Luc Besson. She’s done sci-fi films, she’s very good with VFX, and she also did Léon. So, the film is in two time frames, has two styles and two editors… and I have to bring it together! It was a mad process. But then again, that’s the point of making the film – to try to prove whether I’m crazy or not!

How did Samantha Morton come on board?

I always knew I wanted to cast an actor that has been on the screen a long time, so I could actually use their career as archive…

Right, because we do see a clip of ‘Minority Report’ at some point…

Yes! We got really lucky because she loved the script. She only read a 20-page script. She didn’t really understand what the hell we were doing, to be honest. She asked: ‘How can this be a feature film?’ There were 20 pages, and there’d just be a line saying: ‘Now we have a section on democracy.’ Because I’d already edited all of the sections, I asked Sam if she wanted to see them. And she told me she just wanted to be in character and that if her character was not in it, then she didn’t want to know. She’s a pro, she was just doing her thing.

What about the emotional cost of making this film? Digging into humanity’s shittiest hits can’t be without consequences…

Oh, it was heavy, man! I’m generally a very positive person, right? But I also am very mouthy, and I care about what’s going on. Also, I have children. The reason I could do this film because I turned 50 during lockdown, and I was thinking it’s very easy now for me to just make a career out of doing biographies. Everyone copies Senna. Everyone wants to do the life story of someone in 10 parts… I’m a bit bored of that. So, I asked myself: ‘What do I do?’ I don’t have a boss. I work for me. I choose what I want to do. I feel like I’m seeing something going on. I have to make this. I know it’s going to be a gamble. I know it’s not going to be easy.

And you take aim at a lot of public figures – Trump, Elon Musk, Putin, Netanyahu…

It’s kind of dangerous to do something like this because you’re basically pointing fingers at very powerful people. But if I didn’t do it now, when am I going to do it? Professionally, it’s a gamble. And then to get back to your question, emotionally, I’m seeing stuff that is just horrible and shocking. I would have people who would work on my crew and it’s really hard. How do you warn them? I’d have young people who want to work with me, work on a documentary, asking me if they can do work experience… And the thing that you do when you do work experience, when you’re starting to film, is you have to log clips. So we had to look after them, because they were going to see some really horrific things. On another film, they would have just looked at football or songs… In this one, you’re looking at real state violence, climate destruction, the lot!

It takes its toll after a while.

I’ll tell you – I drive everyone mad in my house! (Laughs) My wife, my kids… Because I get quite obsessed with the work when I’m in it. It becomes really important and personal, and I can’t help it. I start ranting a bit… But it’s always for a reason. I had to somehow live it.

I’ll be honest, I’m one of those people… I’m brown. My name is Muslim. My family are from India. I’ve been blacklisted when I’ve been to certain countries because they think I look like a terrorist. This has been my experience. It’s not like something that I just noticed. It’s been all my life, but I maybe didn’t have any power to do anything about it before. I just had to try and make a career. Then you get to a point saying: ‘Well what’s the point of all this?’ I might as well make something which is talking about the world we’re living in and where my kids are going to end up. I have to try.

Plus, this year there are more elections happening around the world than ever before. As one of my interviewees says in the film: 72 per cent of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule. When I started the film, journalists in America would say: ‘Democracy has 20 years to exist.’ And then they would say: ‘It’s 10 years away.’ And this year, they say: ‘This is it. If Trump wins, it’s the end of democracy.’ Because he’s basically said it. He said that he’s going to be a dictator “just for one day.” He said that. There’s so much that happens that we forget, but do you remember that happened?

Yes, and he tried to pass it off as a joke.

I think one of the first things that he would get rid of in the US is the two terms. That’s why there’s a little thing at the beginning of the film where we have an American president who is in power for 30 years.

I like how in ‘2073’, you approach the notion of “The Event”, the point that triggers our downfall. It’s specific but at the same time quite open.

That’s because we’re in it! Look what’s happening politically in Germany, in France, in the US… It’s happening where we all live. We just tend to dismiss things, but they build up. I do think the way the world changed is that we’re all meant to be in our little individual bubbles, on our phones, arguing with some random person we’ve never met… Or it’s ‘They liked my Tweet, great!’ Fuck that. It doesn’t mean anything!

While the film is incredibly hard hitting in the way that you establish a cause and effect between what seem to be separate events, as they all – in an interconnected way – lead to our downfall. That said, I was glad that there wasn’t a hopeful, Hollywood style ‘It will be fine in the end’ moment at the end…

Fuck that! Fuck the hopeful moment!

Right, because it would undermine the nature of ‘2073’ as a cautionary tale sent back from the future…

And everyone tells you to do it! (Laughs) Believe me, the conversations I’ve had… I’m not talking about my financiers, but there were lots of people who told me that they were really interested in making films about the climate, interested about the breakdown of democracy and journalism… Okay, sure. I said: ‘Can I show you something?’ I showed them the documentary parts of the film, and their reaction was: ‘Where’s the hope?’ The reason to make this film and not to make it hopeful is because this is serious stuff we’re talking about. And it’s all going to affect every one of us.

On a personal level, is there anything that gives you hope and makes you think there might be a way of salvaging our existence and prevent us from walking straight into a dystopia?

Well, it’s not the rise of AI, I can tell you that. Now, there’s the threat you as a journalist may be taken over by AI soon…

Don’t remind me. There are some people at Euronews who look like they might be considering it…

Bloody hell… And AI didn’t exist in this form when this film started, right? In five years time, will anyone be in a job? Seriously, nobody even knows.

But to answer your question about if anything gives me hope – I honestly feel the hope is every time I’ve shown this film. The conversation after the film is the best thing. The film is just the excuse to bring us together, to talk to people from all over the world. Because I have not met many people since pre-COVID. I haven’t travelled much, and the world is very different now. When you meet and talk, like we’re doing now… That’s the hope. The idea for me was to make a film. I want it to be in the cinema. I want it to be a collective experience. I want people to be in a room, to come out and start talking. And then it’ll be a personal thing: ‘What can I do? Maybe I shouldn’t use that app anymore… Maybe it’s good to know who owns the app, because who am I making really rich?’ And then that extends to: ‘What can I do to the people around me? Family, kids, friends, whoever it is… When they say something, pull them up on it.

And then there’s a bigger thing, which is: How do we make laws? How do we change power and the relationship the powerful have with wealthy people? Because that’s why there are all those shots in the film of all these people shaking hands. That’s not accidental. We don’t elect that lot, but that lot helped the other lot get elected, and that lot make the laws that mean you will probably have a contract that says you can’t say anything political. That didn’t happen in 2019! You were allowed to have a personal opinion! You cannot have a personal opinion now, and the only reason I can is because I don’t have a contract with anyone. Apart from me, because I’m the producer! But I have been told: ‘We’re watching you, Asif. We see what you’ve been saying.’ This is just shit, man. This is real!

Have you had any blowback then from the industry or any other warnings like the one you just mentioned? Because as you say, you do point a lot of fingers in this film at some very powerful people, and you’re also known for speaking your mind in day-to-day life…

You have no idea! Let’s leave it at that, because if some of my other statements filled you with dread, you may lose more sleep over it!

2073 premiered at the Venice Film Festival as part of the ‘Out Of Competition – Non-Fiction’ section. It competes in the 57th Sitges Film Festival and will be presented in the ‘Strands: Debate’ section of the 2024 BFI London Film Festival – both this month. It is distributed by NEON – theatrical release date pending.