ASIF KAPADIA
Director Asif KAPADIA on the subjects of his three ‘outsiders’ documentaries — Ayrton senna, Amy Winehouse and, most recently, Diego Maradona
The driving force of Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona.
“I’M AN ACCIDENTAL trilogist,” laughs Asif Kapadia. “Well, I’m an accidental documentary filmmaker!” There’s truth in that. When Kapadia, the director of fiction feature films such as The Warrior and Far North, turned his hand to documentaries with 2010’s Senna, the story of the life and death of the great Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, “it was a one-off as far as I was concerned.” But the universe had other plans and now, almost a decade later, Kapadia finds himself the director of two more documentaries — Amy, the story of the tragic life of Amy Winehouse, which won him an Oscar; and now Diego Maradona, which focuses on a brief period in the life of the most controversial, and arguably best, footballer of all time, as he grappled with addiction and inner darkness while inspiring Napoli and Argentina to glory. Kapadia sees clear parallels between these three very different people from vastly different backgrounds — “They’re all outsiders, they’re all fighting against the system. In a way they kind of became gods, they became mythic.” And here he talks us through each.
1 SENNA (2010)
“On Senna, we were discovering the form. I was making up a way of making a film. I’d never done a doc [before]. And this idea of doing it solely with archive footage, where you take the footage that essentially has been seen by everyone on TV, and you do interviews but don’t do talking heads, nobody really believed in at the time. I needed to get people to buy into the concept that this actually is a movie. Now, over the three films, it’s gone from, ‘What the hell is this guy doing?’ to almost becoming the industry norm. It was a hard one because I went in there thinking, ‘How do you make this interesting?’ He’s in a car. He drives around
in circles. He’s wearing a suit. He’s got a helmet. You can’t see his eyes. I can’t interview him. But when he did speak, he was so eloquent, so intelligent. In two or three languages he could explain everything that was in his heart and mind. And the spiritual element became a big part of it. He had belief and faith. He knew what he stood for, and he went for it. But that almost means you have to sacrifice yourself.”
2 AMY (2015)
“Senna was really hard. I’m really proud of the film but I thought, ‘I’m never going to do that again.’ I got offered quite a few things, including the chance to do the Diego Maradona film, but passed.
Then Amy came along and there was something there. I thought, ‘This is a really interesting way of making a film about London, and creativity, and the girl-nextdoor, and what it means to create.’ Amy is the odd one out, in a way. She wasn’t spiritual like Senna or Maradona. Her belief was in love. She needed love and craved support. If she’d had a sense of faith or spirituality, maybe that would have helped her at times to believe in herself. I always wondered if that could have helped her. I got obsessed with her. I wasn’t expecting that. It became a very intense experience. There was a lot of freedom. There was no script, there was no pitch, I just said, ‘Give me the music and the publishing and leave us alone.’ I found a system of working that I didn’t realise I was craving, which is to have more freedom and go where the story takes me, which is very difficult to do with feature films.
3 DIEGO MARADONA (2019)
“When it came along again, Maradona had been in my life a long time. And I didn’t want to do a film about football. He’s bigger than most footballers; he’s more complex, he’s edgier, he’s gonna be difficult. The reasons not to do it were huge, but I thought, ‘Well, that’s a reason to do it.’ And if this was going to be a trilogy, the rule of thirds is that you do it once, you do it again, and then it has to be different. So he’s alive, he’s older, he’s had kids. And I could interview him. I got ten hours with Diego Maradona. We picked and chose quite carefully what we have in the film, but having that time meant I could talk to people around him, and his family, and I would know the stories. That was a really key part of trying to make the most honest film that we could. Part of the journey to make the film was that he had become a slightly joke-like figure. It’s the same way people used to laugh at Amy. But the more you find out about these characters, the less funny it is. They’re in trouble, actually. It’s someone crying out for help. I’m a feature filmmaker, and I like genre films. So Senna is an all-out spiritual action-hero film. Amy is a love story in a way, but it’s also a musical. The songs are key. Diego Maradona is a gangster film. Beneath it all is the idea of a street guy who rises up to the top and ends up back on the street somehow.”