Asif Kapadia, face to face with the audience

The renowned British director and author of acclaimed documentaries about Diego Maradona, Amy Winehouse -with which he won an Academy Award-, Ayrton Senna, and Roger Federer, offered a seminar to a packed audience at the Aula Magna of the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism (FADU), where he held a conversation with his Argentine colleague Jorge Leandro Colás.

It was a true masterclass before a full auditorium, where the British filmmaker shared stories from the making of his celebrated films, offered advice, and answered all questions from attendees with warmth and remarkable attention to detail. Speaking about his creative process in Senna and Amy, he explained: “With Senna, there were many books and stories, and he had died 14 years before we began making the film. With Amy, it had been less than a year since she passed away, but there were home recordings from her family, her record company, her manager, and even her boyfriend at the time. With all of that, I was able to create a mosaic to show what her short but intense life had been like.”

“Filmmaking is about constantly facing problems and figuring out how to solve them. We don’t have enough money, there isn’t enough time, resources are limited… What do we do? Many people panic, but I actually enjoy it. If there’s a problem, I stay calm and look for a solution. For me, it’s been like traveling with a circus. The circus moved around, and I’ve been traveling with cinema, with the circus around the world,” he said in one of the most memorable moments of his talk.

Kapadia is one of the featured guests of FIC.UBA, where he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa, and his short films and documentaries are being screened in a special section dedicated to his work. His new film, 2073, also premiered at the festival -a dystopian piece blending documentary and fiction elements, set in a supposedly future world where democracy has fallen to the rise of populism, totalitarian control, and environmental collapse.