20,000 Days on Earth

20,000 Days on Earth (2014) is a British documentary — part fiction, part self-portrait — directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, available to watch online on iFILM. The premise: day 20,000 in Nick Cave's life, reconstructed as a single day with a camera.

Cave records with Warren Ellis, visits an archive full of personal artefacts, and sits with a psychoanalyst. Then passengers materialise in the back of his car — Blixa Bargeld, Kylie Minogue, Ray Winstone — memory playing out as real-time conversation. The film makes no effort to hide what it's doing; the fabrication is announced as the method.

Shot between Brighton and Melbourne, 20,000 Days on Earth picked up the BAFTA for Editing. It works as an essay on artistic myth-making, the unreliability of memory and how musicians construct their own legends — far closer to a Chris Marker film than a concert doc. Stream 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) online on iFILM.