Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the American director, documentary filmmaker, journalist and photographer, Laura Poitras. This Wednesday, March 15, 2023, his documentary film “All the beauty and the blood spilled” is released in cinemas, which received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2022.
Laura Poitras is an American director, documentary filmmaker, journalist and photographer. She is what is called a committed filmmaker. In 2015, she received the Oscar for best documentary for her film, Citizenfour, which retraced the revelations of Edward Snowden. She is also the big winner of the 79th Venice Film Festival for All the beauty and the blood toé, saluted in the middle with a gold Lion.
This Wednesday, March 15, 2023 is released at the cinema this documentary, All the beauty and the bloodshed in which she tackles with photographer Nan Goldin those responsible for the opioid crisis, which killed more than 500,000 people in the United States in 2010.
franceinfo: This film is a clever mix between a portrait of the New York photographer and testimonies of her fight against the wealthy Sackler family, at the head of the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma, responsible for the opioid crisis with the marketing of OxyContin, of which she was well aware of the dangers of dependency on patients. Is this documentary through her a life lesson and a message of hope?
Laura Poitras: You know, for me, this film comes as an extension of my work on the American empire, power and the people who decide to fight it by taking risks. So it’s wonderful to be here. I know that Nan’s work is very much loved, very respected in France and that she is very rooted there.
>> Opioid crisis: who is Nan Goldin, this photographer fighting against the manufacturers of OxyContin?
Courage, Nan Goldin had it. She started this fight against the Sackler family, a very essential family of patrons in the art world. We have the feeling, at the very beginning, moreover, that nothing is going to be possible and in the end, even if they are not convicted in criminal proceedings, they end up falling. They mostly end up coming face to face with their victims.
Yes, there was a lot of silence from the institutions. And as she herself had been able to overcome this addiction to OxyContin, she knew that it was the Sacklers who were linked to this crisis. And this name of Sackler, she only knew it from the museums. In this film, we deal with impunity since finally, this family was able to escape the criminal dimension by filing for bankruptcy. What we manage to show in the film is when, through this trial, we force the members of this family to listen to the testimonies of the victims. And she is completely unmoved by them.
This film ‘All the Beauty and the Spilled Blood’ reveals something about the United States, a society that allows corporations to profit from the suffering of citizens and that stigmatizes the people, the victims.
Laura Poitrasat franceinfo
Nan Golding won with a lawyer who volunteered against 80 lawyers opposite. It’s a huge life lesson. You are also a life lesson and I would like people to talk about you. Your first documentary was about the war in Iraq. You have also been placed on the United States Department of Homeland Security’s watch list. You are stopped more than 40 times at the US border at this time. You were chosen by Edward Snowden to make revelations, which gave rise to the film Citizenfour, for which you won an Oscar. What is your engine?
I made a film about the occupation of Iraq and the war. I spent eight months there filming the occupation, documenting it from the perspective of an Iraqi doctor, and it was rage that drove me against this American occupation and especially the fact that they claim do it in the name of democracy. And because I was under this surveillance by the US government, I became an expert in how to encrypt all my data and still managed to do my job. So, obviously, it’s a dimension that Edward Snowden hasn’t escaped. Sometimes it’s scary. I’m not going to lie, I don’t sleep well. I am concerned that indeed the Americans are quite capable of putting me in jail. See what happened to Julian Assange for what he published on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they want to keep him in prison for life. It’s absolutely terrifying for any investigative journalist in the world, myself included, because we could be next in line.
What does this documentary represent then?
We talked about spilled blood more than about beauty and yet, that’s the heart of the film. It’s truly a celebration of the power of one person’s art to have the ability to make a difference and to inspire others with the ability to resist and not let people get destroyed. There are artists who continue to celebrate sexuality and being queer and other worldviews and that, to me, is very inspiring.