All the Beauty and All the Bloodshed director Laura Poitras tells the multifaceted story of Nan Goldin and her quest to uncover the Sackler family

Individuals confronting the power of powerful institutions. This thematic focus brings together much of the work of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.

The oath, from 2010, revolved around two men — one Yemeni, the other Saudi — involved in the Bush administration’s war on terror. The 2015 Oscar-winning documentary citizen four revolved around cyber intelligence service provider Edward Snowden, who disclosed top-secret details of the NSA’s global surveillance program. Poitras returns to the Oscar race this year All the beauty and the bloodshedher film about artist Nan Goldin, who opposed the powerful Sackler family, billionaire owners of OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.

Goldin became addicted to Purdue’s signature drug, and later founded the organization PAIN to embarrass museums and cut ties with the Sacklers, who burnish their name by making large donations to major art institutions.

DEADLINE: When did you first meet Nan Goldin and how did the documentary come about?

LAURA POITRAS: I came across Nan’s work when I was in film school. i bumped The ballad of sexual dependencefirst as a book, and then I saw it projected [as a slideshow]. I was really inspired by what she did in terms of cinematic language and in terms of framing, mise-en-scene and using slideshows as a narrative tool, just really breaking new ground. So I knew her work that way, but I didn’t know her personally.

We first met when I published citizen four — I traveled with it, we happened to be at the same festival. And then fast forward to 2019, where we met again and that’s how this current movie came about. She told me she was documenting the work of PAIN, her organization against the Sacklers, and I was very excited. I said, “If there’s anything I can do to help…” She said, “Well, we’re looking for producers.” And then I finally volunteered for the project. So it was a film largely initiated by Nan and her organization.

DEADLINE: Goldin is one of the producers of the film. It is somewhat unusual for the subject of a film to also have a producer.

POITRAS: It is not Which unusual. I think it’s case by case. On for example citizen fourEd [Snowden] could not be a manufacturer. We were dealing with the NSA and he was really a source. It would put him in danger. But for a film like this, created by Nan and built so strongly around her artwork, it was really important that she be a part of this film. And in the film she talks about how she works with the people she photographs [permitting them to tear up photos if they want to]. There’s a kind of collaborative relationship that works with that, and I think we tried to incorporate that into the making of this film.

DEADLINE: The film paints a portrait of an artist and a person. And yet this campaign by PAIN is an essential part of holding the Sackler family accountable. They are two very connected things and yet separate in a way. How did you manage to balance that in storytelling?

POITRAS: There was a great editing team on this film, and Joe Bini – he edited a lot of Werner Herzog’s films – he had these ideas about dramaturgy and produced a document that really articulated the themes in this chapter structure… The first chapter is called ‘Merciless Logic’ which we learn is something Nan’s sister quotes from Joseph Conrad. It captured something – themes of a society, a brutal society that crushes people who are rebels and misfits and rise to power. And it rewards people like the Sacklers who profit recklessly from people’s suffering and death. We had a very strong dramaturgy that helped us narrow down the people we wanted to focus on.

I like movies with multiple stories where you’re in one and then it’s like you go down a rabbit hole and you’re somewhere else and then you go back. I like what it does as a viewer experience. And I think we managed to do that a little bit in this film. There are trap doors where we go and we meet people – Tin Pan Alley and Maggie Smith at the Times Square bar for example. This film made it possible for us [do that] Because Nan’s life is so extraordinary, we can move from or go to all these different places, like P-Town. [Provincetown, Massachusetts], a large queer community. Nan’s life and the material from her personal archive offered opportunities.

How did we put it together? Trust me, it didn’t work right away. It worked on paper, and then it was a disaster on the timeline. It doesn’t just happen. There is a kind of iteration, iteration, iteration [process], what is the information you need here to get to the next place, but not so attractive that you can’t leave? And it’s just time, time, time.

DEADLINE: An important common thread between All the beauty and the bloodshed and your earlier films deal with this theme of people confronting powerful forces.

POITRAS: I think it’s a continuum. Before I did documentaries, I came out of this much more experimental avant-garde film tradition. I worked with different forms. I’m drawn to watching…where there’s drama.

It had that. It had a small group that took on the Sacklers; They have meetings, they are followed by a criminal PI guy. It had a lot of ingredients and that kind of drama that my other films have.

But then again, Nan’s openness and willingness to be so raw and honest about her life is something else entirely. And this is the partnership with Nan. What is the difference between this movie? It’s Nan that she brings to this film, different from my previous films.

DEADLINE: Did you identify with Nan and other people in the film — PAIN’s Megan Kapler and New York writer Patrick Radden Keefe — who thought they were being monitored? You kind of experienced that because of the nature of your job.

POITRAS: I definitely related to that. When I was working on the project, they were quite out of sorts. The person who saw her following didn’t hide it. And we actually did a lot more research on that. We actually identified him and we met him. I tried to turn it around. I wanted him to go on the record and talk about who hired him and share all the surveillance footage.

I just had a fantasy that I could turn it around. We hit him, I couldn’t turn him over and we didn’t record it [in the film]. We also ended up liking him a lot because he felt like a working class guy trying to survive. And he also spoke out against Big Pharma. He was actually very in sync with Nan, even though he scared her to death… But yeah, that appealed to me. And it also shows the playbook as if that’s what powerful people do. That’s what [Harvey] Weinstein did this to intimidate his victims.

DEADLINE: Your film is only the second documentary to win the Golden Lion in Venice. How surprised were you to win the award?

POITRAS: It was surreal, I mean really surreal. I keep expecting to wake up like, “Oh my god, that couldn’t possibly have happened.” We knew we were invited to Venice, but for a while we didn’t know we were in competition. That’s important to me – I think non-fiction is film. But when we were told we’d made it to the competition, for me it was the victory in saying, ‘okay, great,’ because it’s important for non-fiction to sit alongside screenwriting in our understanding of cinema. So I was very lucky to be invited to a competition and to be able to perform on this platform. I had no expectations [of winning]. I didn’t even think about it. It was wonderful. It was really extraordinary.

DEADLINE: You were recently named Guest of Honor at IDFA in Amsterdam. They did a Q&A there with the festival’s artistic director, Orwa Nyrabia. I spoke to him afterward, and he was happy to teasingly accuse you of secretly loving the United States, despite the power of much of your work.

POITRAS: It was so funny. I thought, ‘Hope and love? What are you asking?” But yes, as I said there, as a citizen of this country I feel an obligation to continue to challenge his power. But “love” is not the word I would use to describe this relationship. not to describe.

DEADLINE: Do you see yourself as a dissident? It’s not really a term used in an American context, but I was wondering if that’s how you see yourself.

POITRAS: I would definitely put myself in the company of people who embrace that term. As I said in an interview with Orwa, one of my jobs is to expose the myth of American exceptionalism. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a dissenting point of view. I think it’s more like, ‘Let’s not pretend we’re not part of a global empire. Let’s not pretend we don’t have proxy wars ending drone strikes and killing people in other countries. Let’s look at things with the truth and be hostile to it,” which perhaps fits the description of a journalist rather than a dissident. But I leave that to others.