Pemberton says he didn’t have a particular ideological bent at the time, but reality hit him hard. I didn’t have Capital in mind at that point, but it was done in the same way where I found interesting storytellers and interviewed them from around the world and then tried to visualize imagery to help tell the story.”īoth Piketty and Pemberton were born in 1971, which meant they came of age just as the Soviet Union was crumbling and free markets were reigning supreme. “In many ways that protest was kind of a dry run for Capital. His most recent film, a 2016 documentary called I Spy (With My Five Eyes), was about the Five Eyes intelligence network between the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But Pemberton believes its huge success helped him land the gig. Pemberton might have seemed an odd choice, having focused on sports for two prior documentaries, including one about New Zealand rugby star Richie McCaw, called Chasing Great. Piketty liked the idea of the story of European and American capital being told by “outsiders, people from the bottom of the world,” says the director. Eventually, Piketty chose New Zealand producer Matthew Metcalfe, and Pemberton was hired as the director. Piketty, himself a film buff, wanted to do a popular culture version of the book, and several producers were pitching for the rights. “This is the film I want to make,” Pemberton says he decided, but he wasn’t alone.
Practically unheard of for an economics text, Capital hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list in 2014, selling millions of copies. Capital tells the story of money and wealth from the 18th century to the present, detailing revolutions, depressions and wars-and piercing the widely accepted view that the accumulation of capital and social progress are entwined.
“I was fascinated by the massive time horizon,” he says.
Pemberton, who had long had a passion for economics, politics and psychology-which he had studied at university-dived right into the book.
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