Asif Kapadia Targets the Elite in Dystopian Docudrama ‘2073’

Asif Kapadia envisions a future where Ivanka Trump, termed “chairwoman,” celebrates her 30th year as the leader of a dystopian fascist police state, a nightmare scenario of what was once America, mostly in ruins following a mysterious “catastrophe” in 2036.

“It’s kind of a joke, but it’s also not a joke,” the British filmmaker remarks about mentioning Donald Trump’s daughter in “2073,” his chilling docudrama highlighting the dystopia humanity might be heading toward. He cites politics, environmental issues, corruption, race, and technology as very contemporary and real factors propelling us in that direction.

“If you look at American politics, certain families keep staying in power — the number of people from a tiny gene pool is insane,” Kapadia adds.

Though the inclusion of Ivanka has a touch of humor, “2073” — supported by Neon, Double Agent, and Film4 and world premiering in Venice on Tuesday — offers little else to be amused by. Kapadia says the film is his response to a world where criticizing the status quo or those in power can cost one their job or worse.

“2073” says a lot. It essentially lays the blame for the impending disaster — be it nuclear war, climate change, or something else — at the feet of leaders, demagogues, tech billionaires, and the 1%. The film showcases the Trumps, Murdochs, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Mohammed Bin Salman, Narendra Modi, the Koch brothers, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and many others. These figures are spliced alongside news clips and amateur footage from the past few decades showing police brutality, rising fascism, the refugee crisis, mass detentions, bombings, and wildfires.

The project began during lockdown when Kapadia put out a tweet asking for help and soon gathered a team of researchers from around the world. It was initially conceived as a “doc set in the future where everything from the future will be factual and created out of bits of the present.” But Kapadia decided to mix fact with drama, creating a scenario in 2073 where Samantha Morton plays a mute survivor plagued by nightmare visions of the past, living underground while surveillance drones patrol the surface.

The past is reconstructed using “footage from around 60 different countries, which I made to look like one place,” Kapadia explains. Some of this footage is very recent. In the opening scenes unveiling the catastrophic event, clips of recent devastation in Gaza are shown.

“Having been doing this for a while, if you feel like you’re onto something in a horrible way, the world comes into sync with the film,” he says. The war in Gaza, the rise of AI, and the growing belief that the upcoming presidential election could be “the end of democracy in the U.S.” all began after he started making the film. “And then a few weeks ago in England we had all these riots.”

“2073” may seem unexpected from the Oscar-winning documentarian known for “Amy,” “Senna,” and “Diego Maradona,” but Kapadia claims these profiles were infused with his drama background. “’Senna’ is an action movie; ‘Amy’ is a musical, a Bollywood film; and ‘Diego Maradona’ is a gangster film set in Naples,” he says.

However, “2073” — an experimental dystopian thriller — feels like a major shift for the director. It’s a highly provocative and uncomfortable feature with global themes that he hopes will make people realize that “what’s happening over there will get closer and closer and eventually come to you.”

As he concludes: “And if you don’t think that’s a problem, then it’s just a movie. But if it is a problem, then you, me, us … we’ve got to do something.”

Kapadia is among the most outspoken filmmakers on social media regarding politics and especially condemning Israel for the violence in Gaza. While this stance hasn’t seemed to hinder his career, he acknowledges that “2073” might, given its subjects involving very powerful, very wealthy people.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have made films and in what I do I’ve been successful,” he explains. “So honestly, I went into this going, ‘I’m going to chuck it all in, I’m not going to be afraid to say what I see, and if I don’t work again, fine, at least I made this movie.’”

Source: Rolling Stone