British film director Asif Kapadia was, for a decade, on a “watch list” that saw him stopped and interviewed every time he tried to enter the US.
The Oscar-winning director of the documentary Amy told this weekend’s Guardian newspaper his experience began after he travelled back from New York in the early 2000s, and a taxi driver observed him taking photos of the city-scape on the way to the airport.
Kapadia, already a BAFTA winner by then for his debut feature The Warrior, told the newspaper:
“I get to the airport and I’m in the Virgin lounge when my name is called out. And I thought: ‘Have I left a bag or something?’ But then five or six people come: homeland security. And they stop me in the lounge in front of everyone, the only person of colour in there, and empty out my bag, and they say: ‘Someone’s reported you. You’ve been acting suspicious.’ And it’s like: ‘Who are you? Why are you here? What were you doing?’”
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Although he was on that occasion allowed to travel, Kapadia said he went on a watch list for nearly a decade afterwards, meaning he would be stopped and interviewed every time he attempted to board a plane:
“I started realising that every time I show my boarding pass, instead of a green light going off, a red light goes off, and then you have to be taken somewhere for an interview.”
For several years, he avoided travelling to the US and, when he was forced to, produced a letter from Universal Studios to say: “Asif is working on this project for us.” He said “being watched and paranoid” became his normal.
Kapadia, who also directed documentaries Senna and Diego Maradona, has spent years making his new film 2073, a genre-defying sci-fi feature set in “New San Francisco”, in the aftermath of an undefined civilisational catastrophe. He uses archive footage, talking heads and fantasy to weave together a story of populist politicians, demagogues, tech billionaires, tech surveillance and climate change, to show how close to disaster we are.
2073 opens in cinemas in the US on December 27 and in the UK from January 1.
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