The intimate and fascinating portrait of a music icon: Nick Cave

24 hours in the life of famous Australian-born rock star Nick Cave. A day seemingly like any other, but where the notions of reality and fiction end up blurring and intertwining...

Rewarded at the last Sundance festival by the prizes for directing and editing in the "World Cinema Documentary" category, 20,000 Days on Earth is a hybrid work, on the border of documentary and fiction, on the musician Nick Cave, rock icon since the 1980s with his band Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. This is the first feature film by British directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, both from the world of contemporary art and whose creations maintain a close relationship with the music scene. Invited by their long-time collaborator Nick Cave to film the recording of his latest album Push the Sky Away in 2013, the three artists then had the idea of ​​developing a parallel project: that of making a film around the musician. They quickly decide to center the action on a single day, the one that would correspond to his 20,000th day on Earth – even if the film will be shot for almost a year. Taking as a starting point the notebooks of the musician, the film is built according to a deeply atypical form: mixing voice-over, dialogues with key personalities in the career of Nick Cave – Warren Ellis, his guitarist of the Bad Seeds, or the singer Kylie Minogue – and excerpts from concerts, the artist of Australian origin reveals herself little by little. In line with One Plus One ( Sympathy For the Devil ) by Jean-Luc Godard, 20,000 Days on Earth brings a real singularity to the ultra-codified genre of the musical documentary, because it is less a question of discovering who is hiding behind the real Nick Cave than trying to better understand the mystery of creation.

ABOUT NICK CAVE
Born in 1957 in Australia, Nick Cave is one of the most important artistic figures of the last three decades. A multidisciplinary and iconoclastic artist, he is a songwriter, singer, writer, screenwriter and actor all at the same time. It was in 1973 that he formed his first rock band, The Boys Next Door, soon to be renamed The Birthday Party. They quickly became pillars of the punk scene with their gothic-influenced rock, first in Australia and then in Europe where the band moved to settle. Nick Cave deploys an impressive charisma on stage, screaming and jumping willingly throughout his concerts. Shortly after The Birthday Party disbanded in 1984, the singer formed Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. The group, still active, has released fifteen albums including the grandiose Murder Ballads in 1996, which features his famous duet with Kylie Minogue “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. His latest, Push the Sky Away , released in 2013, was once again acclaimed by audiences and critics – the film 20,000 Days on Earth shows excerpts from his recording. Nick Cave is known for his particularly lyrical writing, denoting a most literary sensibility – he is also the author of several novels. He has also composed soundtracks for films, including The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Andrew Dominik (2007) or The Road by John Hillcoat (2009), accompanied by his fellow guitarist Warren Ellis. His attraction for cinema does not stop at film music alone, since Nick Cave has also written screenplays ( The Proposition and Lawless Men by John Hillcoat, respectively in 2005 and 2012) and made appearances in various feature films. films, notably in The Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders in 1987 and Johnny Suede by Tom DiCillo in 1991.

20,000 DAYS ON EARTH
(2014 – Colors – 97 mins)

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