welcome to hardtalk. i'm sarah montague. my guest is one of the most acclaimed documentary makers working today. an oscar and bafta winner, his films about ayrton senna and amy winehouse broke box office records. but asif kapadia's latest movie takes him in a very different direction. it melds news footage with science fiction to paint an extremely bleak picture of what the world could be like in 2073. a planet destroyed by right— wing autocrats, tech oligarchs, climate change, and our indifference. he calls it a warning, but how realistic is it, and why produce something so political now?

asif kapadia, welcome to hardtalk. hi, sara. really happy to be here. now, your latest film, 2073, sort of pitches itself as a true sci—fi horror. the trailer says, "this is not fiction, "this is not a documentary, "this is a warning." is it really what you think 2073 will look like? i mean, who knows what 2073 is going to look like, but i feel like all the signs are there. we're in the middle of something. things are happening. they're happening really fast, and i don't know if everyone can keep up. ijust wanted to make a film which was about a feeling that i had of unease, of fear, of worry, and also, i suppose i was thinking about what are we leaving behind for our kids?

so the year 2073 is when my kids will be a certain age. i may not be around, but they will be. what are we leaving for them if we don't stand up and speak up now? 0k, and what you've done with this movie is to cut real footage of events now, whether it's protests, riots, effects of climate change, with a fictional vision of the future, which, 2073, which, i mean, it's a post—apocalyptic, it is a terrifying world that you present. i just wonder if the way in which you intercut these... these things, whether it is fair because you've also described it as a documentary. mm—hm. is itfair? fair is an interesting word...question to ask. what it is, is based on fact. it's based on research. it's based on interviews with experts. um, i wanted to make a film.

i have made fiction films. i've made documentaries. i wanted to... i like to experiment with my own work. i wanted to put the two together in this film. part of the reason for framing it as if it was a sci—fi set in the future is, everything feels so dystopian. everything feels like... whatever�*s happening around us feels so futuristic, you know? when i started in film, ai did not exist. you know, these tech guys are now the richest people in the world, most powerful people in the world. they're in government now, running the richest and most powerful country in the world. so the whole thing feels very relevant, so i wanted to put it together and construct it. but it all started with research, journalism — i spoke to a lot of brilliant experts in the world of ai, kind of democracy, climate. all of these people came together... surveillance. and i thought, "0k, let me put this all together in a movie." but because i don't have a central character, because i don't have one bad actor, or it's not about one country or one theme, i wanted to write something that gave us a spine, and that's where the fiction element comes in. but all of the most scary, horrific, awful things

in the film are all factual. that's the important detail. that's all based on real material. but you use voices generally from the left. you don't contextualise them or give indication of their political affiliation. what do you mean by "from the left" though? where's peter thiel from? well, depending how you present them. but, for example, in the section you have james o'brien, you have george monbiot, you have silkie carlo as a surveillance expert. you don't mention that she's the director of the campaigning ngo big brother watch. i think that's captioned, isn't it? no, it's not. what is captioned? surveillance expert. right. so what's the problem there? well, do you not... the question is whether you should have given more context. what's interesting is i'm making a movie. i don't do what you do. yourjob, when you're doing the news or you're working for the bbc, you have this problem, don't you? almost. i think it's a problem. you've got to present both sides.

i'm a film director. i make movies. my name's on it. it's my world view. it's my point of view. i do the research, i raise the money, i write it, direct it, produce it, and i put it out. it's not myjob to offer every point of view. that's what bbc journalism has to do. the reason i ask about whether it's fair, you say that the bbc has a certain role. do you not have also a responsibility? i'm a film director. i can tell the story that i want to tell. so it doesn't matter? well, i think there's a differentjob when you work in public tv and when you make feature films. and in the same way someone does make a horrorfilm, you don't worry about where their point of view is. so, polemic is fine. what's interesting is the people that are featured, the tech bros, own twitter. they own facebook. they own the washington post. they own... they own most of the news and media organisations and social media apps in the world. they've got a way to tell their opinion. express themselves, haven't they? where's our right to reply to all of that? now, you've said... you have said you want to defend democracy...

did i? ..but in the democracy segments you don't distinguish between leaders such as vladimir putin, xijinping or saudi arabia's mohammed bin salman, and those who were elected who you may not approve of, the likes of donald trump, javier milei, giorgia meloni. is it not anti—democratic to infer...? well, i suppose the inference from it is that people elected the wrong leaders. no, i think people can elect whoever they want. what i'm looking at is a creep towards authoritarianism and fascism and pushing further and further to the right. and i think what these people are believing and the erosion of human rights — this is a global thing, this idea of being able to protest or speak up, or having any way of kind of countering what is happening. like i said, this is a film based on a feeling and also personal experience. i'm, you know, my family is from india. i've been to india. i've seen what's been happening to muslims in india. i've spoken to journalists from there. i'm a film—maker, but my work has come out of the research,

of interviewing and speaking to people who are actually experiencing things, like rana ayyub in india, being in brazil when making senna, and seeing the rise and the want for a strong man to come along. and this was pre bolsonaro. i was in the us and i've worked there a lot, and i was there during the trump campaign, and i was there the day he banned all muslims entering the country. so i'm living this experience and i'm making a film based on things that i've seen... 0k. ..and witnessed. because in this film... i was here during brexit and all of the referendum lies. let me ask about that. that's the construction of the film. your experience of surveillance because there are very compelling... you have drones, you have cameras on corners. it is intense surveillance represented in this film. is that as a result of your own experience, because you have said that you were on a us terror watch list? mm. yes, i was. post 9/11, i don't know if it was a year or two afterwards, i was just travelling. i was there for business, there for a film meeting.

um, because it was a film meeting, i was given a driver. i was driving back tojfk. 0n the way tojfk, i'm leaving manhattan over the brooklyn bridge. it's the most gorgeous sunset over manhattan. i was taking photographs from the car of manhattan, but the driver thought i looked suspicious and so reported me to homeland security for taking photographs of manhattan. and the consequence of that was? my name was called out injfk, the entire airport, and i was interviewed in the lounge, the business class lounge, in front of everyone. my bag was emptied. i wasn't deported because i'd done nothing wrong. i had an itinerary. i could say who i was meeting and why i was there, but the point was, every time i went to the us after that for a decade probably, two or three times before i get on a plane to, you know, as i get off the plane an interview and... and the people had told me, you know, homeland security said, you know, "someone thought you looked suspicious", and that's it. and now if you go to the us? funnily enough, that all stopped when trump came in. he just banned muslims.

so did you go to the us? i have been to the us. i work there quite a lot. yeah, i have been there. i haven't had any issues in recent years, but probably if i mention it, who knows what'll come up again? what was interesting is when i mentioned it, and it was in a guardian article, the number of people that i know, asian people, who said they had exactly the same experience. it's very common. you know, people didn't talk about it, but it's happened to pretty much everyone i know. um, 2073, your latest film, so different from your earlierfilms, which were documentaries. something you got into because of your experience with harvey weinstein. tell us about that, because that was... you had your first film, the warrior, a feature film, won awards but has no distribution outside the uk, and you blame that on harvey weinstein. harvey weinstein bought the film and bought it for the whole world. bought. . . bought the international rights. my first feature, i spent four or five years working on it.

i get flown to new york. i'm in a big boardroom with 20 people who are all being very friendly. the minute harvey walks in, no—one makes eye contact again. the deal was, here's a pile of scripts — you have to make your next three films for me exclusively, or i don't release your film. and so my issue was, i'd read all the screenplays and i was like, "i don't really like them. "they're not grabbing me, but i'd love to work with you." you know, we'll find something. and he said, "no, i need a guarantee "that all three films from now on will be mine, "or i will not release the film." and i said, "i'm not a huge fan of contracts. "i've always worked for myself. "i'll do a film with who i want to work with." he said, "well, no—one will know your film exists." i was like, "well, "that's not going to make me sign a contract." so i didn't sign, so he said, "i'll kill the film". now, you must have walked away from that meeting what, distraught? no, ijust i don't really like bullies, so i wasn't going to agree to it. i know a lot of people who agreed to that deal, and they never made a film again. and that's the challenge, right?

so myjob as a film—maker is i always felt ijust want to be here for the long term. i will decide what i do, when i want to do it, who i want to work for, who i don't want to work for. i think it's really important to control your own career. but, rather remarkably, it made you turn to documentaries. one of the reasons, yes. it meant i could make films with less money and with less kind of control, less people telling me what to do. actually, they became more successful. so senna came out of that. i was a hired director on senna. amy, diego maradona. i felt i could work, in a way, more quickly, because i wasn't stuck in development hell, which is often what happens when you work on a screenplay. but also, i like the idea of telling stories using factual characters and factual research and putting it on screen. and also, i suppose i created a particular style of using archive only, which really started with senna, and continued with the others films. and had a profound effect ever since on the way that biographical documentaries are made. but amy, i mean, you take, say, senna and amy, or even maradona, compared with 2073, i mean, they seem...

you could argue that they're relatively trivial subjects. i feel like they're from a previous life, when i could make a film about a racing driver and everything was fine, and, actually, ijust feel like we're in a different world right now — things are moving so fast and i don't really know where they're going, so i felt for me, i had to make a film about what was happening now, but i was a different person when i made the warrior. you know, each film is representing who i was at a particular point in my life. i'm very proud of all of the documentaries, but by the time i got to 2073, i felt i wanted on purpose to challenge myself, do something different, and not keep repeating the technique that i feel like i know i'm doing and i'm pretty good at it. ok, but when you take amy, as i understand it, part of the driving force from that was representing mental health because of your health, because of your own experiences with your mother. yeah, yeah. my mother had schizophrenia, so i was dealing with... well, my family and my siblings were dealing with that all the way through growing up. it was one of those issues where, when you're growing up, you're almost a parent.

the parents are not a parent to you. so that was just something where i've had lots of people around me who have had lots of mental health issues, and so the idea of making films where people almost mock someone who's not well, and you can see they're not well, and they need help, somewhere, subliminally, was a reason for doing amy. but i also wanted to make a london film. i wanted to make a film about the city that i live in and have grown up in. everything i love about it, everything i don't like about it, and i love the fact that a young jewish girl who's into hip—hop and jazz could write music the way she did, perform the music, be so funny and witty and brilliant. what i didn't like was the way the media portrayed her, and the way she was picked on and attacked and humiliated and turned into tabloid fodder. and so that was me kind of questioning the business and the industry that we're in. the entertainment business didn't protect her. and the film was very well received, except from by her family. and, i mean, this has all been gone over many times. her father said he felt sick, that amy would be furious. ijust wonder, given

the criticism, and they dissociated themselves from this movie... did they? er, he did. one person did. well, also, her boyfriend at the end of her life was very critical of it too. have you definitely got that as a fact? er, reg travis, who said that... 0h, right, yeah. he wasn't really featured in the film, which was one of the reasons i think he was maybe upset. he only appeared in a photo montage, but he claimed that you manipulated the material, and that you had a professional responsibility to produce a truthful depiction of her life. this is what i wanted to get to, which is the responsibility that you owe to those who know the subject best in a way, or to the facts. you talk about the research that you do, and yet at the same time you say, "a documentary is just my impression of something". i think that's true, though. if you make a film about amy winehouse, 20 people could make a film about amy winehouse. they won't be the same film. so my film and my way of working using archive

is a very particular style. i could say to you, i interviewed 120 people, of which one person came out and criticised the film, and everyone else said it was legit and honest and truthful, and they were all parts of her life. i mean, the argument was by... and i mean, there is a bigger question — who is the best person to judge a person's life? is it only an adult who was theirfather, or is it everyone else that was there during their younger years and theirfriends, and people who were there when they were growing up and becoming famous, or their management? that's one of the challenges of making any documentary. i'm fully aware of that. so myjob is to create a mosaic with lots of different voices, lots of different points of view, and it's only when you zoom out of a mosaic do you see the image. now that image is constructed very carefully over a long period of time, from lots of different people, footage and archive. it's just that you've said in the past "there's a lot of cheating that happens to reveal truth". sure. "no—one should ever think "that documentaries are somehow more honest than fiction. "film—making is all about

what you can get away with." i've said a lot, haven't i, in the past? but i think it's true. i think there's an interesting kind of pedestal that documentaries are put on which fiction films are not, and i have made both, and documentaries manipulate by the simple fact if there's a camera in the room, you're affecting the people in the room. you can go back to the oldest documentaries made when someone went to, you know, the arctic, or made a film about nanook of the north — they made them do more than one take. you don't see that. attenborough's films are constructed out of lots of different animals. you know, that's just film—making. that's how film—making is done. that's how news is done. that's how tv works — there's editing, or else you'd show everything unedited, and that wouldn't be very interesting. that's construction. but you do your research in order to reveal truth. but you've still got an opinion. everyone has a point of view. that's film—making. right. it really isn't that different, drama and documentary, i would say. with all that you're trying to do, and i suppose particularly with 2073,

where the main character in it says, "it's too late for me, "it may not be too late for you," what are you hoping will happen? are you hoping that the film world, for example, that the art world will respond to what... to the warnings you're making? i don't think it's really the film world or the art world. i think my most interesting kind of reactions when i've shown the film are kind of ordinary people who come in the audience and they all say, "you've somehow expressed "what i've been feeling". for a lot of people, there's a moment of saying, "are we going crazy? are we going mad? "is this all happening and no—one is stopping it?" and actually, by talking to one another in the auditorium after the film becomes a form of therapy and a release to say, "ok, we are all feeling this", so i don't know if i'm making it... i'm not really making films just for the film business. i mean, they're quite happy doing what they're doing. some of the film business may also like the film or react to the film, or have a problem with the film, but it's really for the general public.

the most interesting audience have often been like teenagers or people at college, low 20s, coming to see the film with their parents and then going away and having a conversation about this, about technology, about how much data you're giving away, how much of yourself do you give away on an app? and what does it mean? you know, i've got teenage kids. lots of people are stuck on their phones talking to people who are not really physically there. i really wanted to just create a dialogue and a conversation for us to think about, what are we doing? for people to respond to it. sure. you said in september, you told novara media, that people are scared to say what they think because they're going to lose theirjobs. "i just decided i'm not afraid. "i'm just going to say what i'm going to say, "and whatever happens, happens." but then a month later, you shut down your account on x. it followed your appointment, then your removal as a patron of the grierson trust, which we should explain is a charity which celebrates documentaries, and that removal happened because your previous social media activity had been made known to the board of the trust. you had retweeted posts on x

which were condemned as anti—semitic, and for which you apologised. were the grierson trust right to withdraw that appointment? i think we're... i think we're living in strange times where people are jumping to conclusions and looking really quickly to kind of make an example of someone. yet, you have an organisation who i've worked for for many years, who knew me, but were pressured by the board, or pressured by people who've never done anything for them, and never done anything for the organisation, into doing something so they don't look like the bad guys. so it's like a weird kind of public shaming. actually, i was always planning to come off x. i was going to because i was spending too much time on it, and it had become a cesspit, let's be honest, from where it began to what it was. so itjust forced the issue. actually, i'm quite glad to get off. my life is much better without it, but it's also really what the film is about is like —

social media can take you down a rabbit hole where you end up having arguments with people you've never met, about things... you start, without thinking, retweeting something that then can be used against you as evidence, you know? actually, the important detail is all the other factual things, all of the hospitals being blown up in gaza, thejournalists being killed, children being shot, that can all be removed, and you just kind of take certain things and pick and choose and say, "look who they are. "look what they stand for", and everything else is ignored. were they wrong to withdraw the appointment? don't really care about their appointment, to be honest. they asked me to be a patron and then they took it back. i don't care either way. i'll carry on doing what i'm doing. you did apologise, but... i think those tweets were done in haste and were not appropriate, but the bigger picture about what is happening in gaza, which i was protesting about, was not... 0k... a lot of it is distraction. it becomes, "let's talk about this and ignore everything else "happening over there." i think what's happening over there is far more important, to be honest. 0k. but what happened in response?

in november, deadline, an entertainment news site, reported that senior muslim figures in british television were planning to boycott the grierson awards because of your treatment. you were described — "asif is a huge role model "to many of us in the industry. his treatment "at this incredibly difficult time for many muslims "in our industry sends a very chilling message." were they right, then, to boycott the awards? i don't know. they could do what they want to do. funnily enough, i wasn't on x. i didn't read any of this. i turned off all of my social media because actually it became quite unhealthy. i do think that we're in a strange time right now. one of the things that happened by switching off social media is i started reading books again, and i read a, you know, jon ronson book — "so you've been publicly shamed". great book. i've had it on my shelf for years. i read it because i was being publicly shamed. the whole thing about being shamed is, if you don't feel shame for what you've said, then they can't shame you. and actually, if you stand up against a genocide, i think i'm in the right.

but that wasn't. .. it wasn't your... but that's what i'm saying... it wasn't your other comments. did you feel shame for what you had retweeted? which is why i apologised. so you did feel shame for part of it? i apologised for what i'd retweeted. but the big picture i don't apologise for. and the point is, you're not asking me about gaza. you're asking me about the retweets. but that's because you're a film—maker, rather than... but what i learned, you know, i'm a public person. i should watch what i do on social media. no—one cared that i talk about football most of the time. but what's interesting is... somebody described it as a very sad time to be a british muslim working in documentary. i don't think it's just a muslim thing, sarah. i think it's a tough time for the arts. it's a tough time for news organisations. lots of people in museums, lots of people running universities. this is happening across the board, in all sorts of art, culture, all organisations. but do muslims... when my film came out, i was interviewed by lots ofjournalists at venice film festival,

and they would ask me questions, and then once the mic was switched off, they'd say, "yeah, we're really worried about what's happening "in our country — we're not allowed to be on social media." you're not allowed to have a personal opinion any more. you have to sign a contract when you work for organisations to never have a personal opinion. so, for you, what next then? i've got lots of projects that i'm working on, but honestly, it was one of those things where it made me really think about the business and think, "do i want to make films?" you know, why should i carry on working in an organisation or an industry that doesn't support you when things like this happen, when you have worked with them and they know you personally over decades? it's been an interesting time, so i will keep doing my thing. i'm quite happy to not have a boss, not have anyone like harvey weinstein, not have any organisation who tells me what i can do, can't do, what films i should make or shouldn't make. and that's the interesting thing for lots of artists — you've got to be in control of your own business, your own work, so you are free to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. asif kapadia, thank you for coming on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. you'll be pleased to hear this really cold spell of weather is at an end. now, if i show you the temperature anomaly chart, any time you see oranges and reds, that's temperatures above average. so it's getting really mild for scotland and northern ireland — temperaturesjumping up, the snow will be melting. for england and wales, temperatures generally getting back to where they should be for the middle ofjanuary. and quite a contrast really early in the morning. we've got the mild air in place for scotland and northern ireland. still a bit chilly, though, for england and wales — any mist and fog patches will be lifting and most places will be dry and bright with some sunshine. but we have more cloud

in the north and that's bringing this rain down across scotland, northern ireland, eventually into northern england and north wales. and we've got the stronger south to south westerly winds for scotland and northern ireland — that's why temperatures could reach 12 or 13 degrees. for england and wales, still a little bit chilly, temperatures five or six degrees, but it is an improvement on what we've seen of late. the colder air is here more towards continental europe. most of us are in mild air, the winds coming in from the atlantic around the top of that area of high pressure. but as that's always going to be close to the south of the uk, here, it will be a bit chilly at times. we could well have some mist and fog to start with on tuesday in southern england. 0n the whole, it's going to be dry, quite cloudy, the best of any breaks in the cloud where we've got a bit of shelter, so eastern scotland and the north east of england seeing some sunshine. and those temperatures again reaching 12, maybe 13 degrees in northern ireland and back, perhaps, into double figures across england and wales, so temperatures rising here. but that area of high pressure is not going away at all. it's going to shift a little

bit further north, pushing that weather front towards the north west of scotland, and with lighter winds overnight and some clear skies for a while across england and wales, we could start grey and misty with some areas of fog that could linger in the southeast through much of the day. otherwise, it brightens up with some sunshine and that weather front brings some rain into the north west of scotland, where again, temperatures are going to be double figures and typically 8—10 celsius across england and wales. but where we have some clear skies overnight, again, we could see temperatures falling close to freezing in england and wales. nothing to worry about, though, further north for scotland and northern ireland — here the temperatures always going to be higher. but what a change this week, it's going to be much milder, a lot of dry weather. still some chilly, misty sort of weather at times across some southern parts of the uk.

live from washington. this is bbc news. 0fficials warn of a very high wildfire threat across los angeles as fire crews make progress containing some smaller blazes.

president biden calls the israeli prime minister to discuss a ceasefire deal in gaza just a week before he leaves the white house. plus — donald trump wants greenland. we hearfrom a danish lawmaker who says they don't want to be american. and from some greenlanders, who say they don't want to be danish either. hello, i'm carl nasman. fire crews in los angeles have made some progress in their battle to contain several fires still burning in the area, but the two largest are still raging largely unchecked. the fires have burned through 40,000 acres and 12,000 buildings — killing at least 16 people. 16 others are missing. officials say high winds are forecast and the threat of more blazes is �*very high�*. at least 20 people have been arrested for looting, including two — who officials say — posed as firefighters. california's governor gavin newsom says 14,000

people are working to fight the fires in what he says may