Screenwriter Paul Laverty has made a name for himself with social realist movies with long-term friend and creative partner Ken Loach, such as Cannes Palme D’Or winners I, Daniel Blake and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Born in Calcutta, India to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, he earned a philosophy degree in Rome and worked, in the mid-1980s, for a human rights organization in Nicaragua. Nowadays, he lives in Edinburgh. Currently, the creative is attending the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival where he is a member of the jury led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and attended by such stars as Tim Roth.
There, Laverty talked to THR about the role of film amid the current state of the world, hopes to work with his partner, Spanish filmmaker Icíar Bollaín (I Am Nevenka) and whether The Old Oak was really Loach’s final feature film.
As a social issues-driven writer, how do you see the outside world affecting what you do today? What does all the change in the world, including the second Trump term, mean for filmmaking?
I would take issue with being an issues-based writer or filmmaker. The character and story must always come first. But obviously the choices of who those characters are, and the premise of each story will reflect your obsessions. As [Bertolt] Brecht says: “if there’s no fun, there’s no show.” So you need the story. The idea of just lambasting stuff and trying to stuff it down people’s throats would be an anathema to myself and Ken.
But I think these days are really remarkable — absolutely remarkable. I think one of the most important documents of our time now is something that’s been totally ignored. It was a study done by [research agency] Forensic Architecture, academics who work out of Goldsmiths, University of London. There’s a wonderful [British Israeli] academic there [founder and director Eyal Weizman]. They bring all the skills of being architects, scientifically and rigorously, and have studied what’s going on in Gaza and published an 823-page report that is a remarkable document and is called “A Cartography of Genocide.” It analyzes tens of thousands of information points to build up a pattern into a picture.
It’s the most incredible document, because it’s so rigorous, and they lay it all out. But it’s just ignored or denied. And so it really begs the huge question of the collusion of our Western governments, the United States, our own government in Britain, in the genocide. I defy anyone to read that and find a weakness in it. But times have changed, and we see what is happening and the scale of it. It just reminds me of the prophet Ezekiel: “We have eyes to see, but do not see. We have ears to hear, but do not see.”
So, I think international law has been torn up. We’ve just seen the United States chasing the ICC, the International Criminal Court [in Den Haag, Netherlands], and pursuing the staff who work for it, harassing them. It’s like the mafia. The people who are set up to look after the Geneva Convention, human rights, the UN Charter, respect for mankind — they are going for them, and that’s remarkable. Are we going to get a film made about that? Some fucking chance! Who are the gatekeepers? What lens do you see the world through?
There is all this talk about us living in the post-truth age, and it seems that more and more people can’t seem to agree anymore what is really going on in the world or what is real or fake. Any thoughts?
You raise a very interesting question. I was in Central America in the ’80s, and I was an eyewitness. There was fake news then, there were false narratives. In the ’90s, Ronald Reagan said that the Contras [the right-wing militias that waged guerilla warfare against the Marxist governments] were the equivalent of the American founding fathers. I was out interviewing people. They were torturing people. They were cutting young girls’ breasts off. They were pulling out eyes. I spoke to people who did that. But they would deny that.
Now, I think, the big difference is that they don’t give a shit. They just don’t give a shit. I think the difference now is there’s absolute impunity.
You mentioned a dismantling of international law. In the U.S., Elon Musk’s job has been cutting back the size of government institutions and spending. Looking at your films, I expect you would see an important role for government…
It’s kind of fascinating, really, because who else has that kind of wealth and that power? He’s totally unelected. He’s a maverick. He could spend $44 billion on Twitter and not bat an eyelid. So there is that concentration of power, that unfettered power that they have. I think what they are doing is just molding the world into the narrative that suits them. Look at the way they have attacked any place that disagrees with them. They are trying to destroy them.
They talk about freedom of speech. It’s just a joke. They are just dismantling anything that’s decent in front of us. It’s the absolute impunity, apart from the crudeness, the vulgarity.
But the thing is: I think Trump is a symptom of what’s going on. I think he’s a symptom of the times. They are fantastic at smelling fear, and there’s that kind of jungle ability to put your finger on the point and the fear. These are dangerous times, really dangerous times. And how many people are going to suffer the consequences in the U.S.? How many lives will be lost? God knows what’s going to happen.
I don’t know if you saw that AI video [that its creators have since called a satire] that Trump shared on Truth Social. In your wildest imagination, you couldn’t have had a [fictitious] character do that. It’s like the golden calf. It was just so crude, so crass, so vicious. And this barbarism mixed with that banality made me think of Hannah Arendt [and her concept of the banality of evil]. I’m trying to encourage people to read Forensic Architecture and Hannah Arendt.
As a filmmaker, how do you see your role in fighting back against such trends that worry you?
You want to use every fiber of your being to confront the viciousness and the barbarism, but we also have to recognize that what filmmakers do is actually tiny and generally insignificant. The people who are doing the grassroots work have the real influence. So I don’t suffer any delusions of grandeur about what we are going to achieve by making a little film. But you try to tell stories that are worthwhile and try and nourish some sense of hope. Because I think what they want to do is kill hope as well. They want to kill hope. I think if you kill hope, you don’t resist. Hope means that you fight back. You’re working with other people, you begin to articulate an alternative.
These are dark days, and we have to find stories that cheer us up and make us laugh and hopefully make us think. When you see such barbarism everywhere, I think it does seep into our psyche. So I think we really have to look after our friends and communities and find ways to be joyful. I think that’s a political position.
You mentioned a hope for people articulating alternatives. How much do you see of that in the world?
I think that’s the most depressing thing, just how the oppositions are so fragmented. So, they are getting a free hand, they are really calling the shots and you see everybody kowtowing and tugging their forelock and being doormats to them. I mean was there anything more nauseating than watching [U.K. Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Keir] Starmer crawl [at the White House] and pull out a letter from the King. What an absolute fucking tosser! That is the level of brown nosing that we get. The Labour Party has just sold its soul.
And it will be very interesting to see what happens in the rest of Europe now [where a lot of countries have seen strong election results for far-right parties].
You mentioned Labour’s soul. Let’s talk about your cinematic soul. Do you know what film you will be doing next? Your partner Icíar told me late last year that you guys may get to work on something together if all goes well?
There are two people I’d really love to work with very soon. One is Icíar. And then there’s a lovely guy in New York: Ramin Bahrani. He did The White Tiger and 99 Homes. I’ve got great respect for Ramin and his work, and I would love to do a project with him. We’re talking, anyway. Fingers crossed. He’s a lovely, really sharp man. He’s a good man with great sensitivity, and very bright and talented. So, fingers crossed.
Was The Old Oak really the last Ken Loach film?
Yes, it will be. We have had a great run. Ken is still remarkably sharp. I have just spoken to him. But he will be 89 on his next birthday [in June]. You know, doing a feature film does take so much energy, especially because he doesn’t delegate very much. So he did The Old Oak when he was 86. It was remarkable, his sheer determination. He is a wonderful man. I just can’t believe how much luck I had to cross paths with him — a wonderful man.
