British film director Asif Kapadia, who won an Oscar for his 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary, has revealed that he spent a decade on a US “watch list” after a taxi driver reported him to the authorities.
Kapadia, 52, is back with a new sci-fi film 2073, and in an interview to promote the film he spoke about being profiled back in the 2000s, after 9/11, while travelling home to the UK from New York.
“There’s a beautiful, gorgeous sunset over Manhattan,” he told The Observer. “I’m in a limo being taken to the airport. And I was taking photos of Manhattan because I was driving over Brooklyn Bridge and it’s just all so cinematic and I became subconsciously aware of the driver watching me in the rear view mirror.”
When he got to the airport, he was relaxing in the Virgin lounge and heard his name being called out.
He recalled: “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?’”
In the end, Kapadia was allowed to travel that day, but for a decade afterwards he was on a watch list, and would be stopped and interviewed every time he tried to travel to the US.
“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.”
At one point, when he was making a movie, Universal Studios had to give him a letter to show to authorities to say: “Asif is working on this project for us.”
He said he got used to “being watched and paranoid”.
Kapadia is also known for making the documentaries Senna and Diego Maradona.
His new feature film is a mixture of drama and documentary, and is set in “New San Francisco” in the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe.
2073 opens in UK cinemas on 1 January.
