Interview
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On the sidelines for eight years, the American filmmaker returns to theaters with “The Bikeriders,” a fascinating dive into the Outlaws bikers of the 1960s, inspired by the work of photographer Danny Lyon, with whom he shares “the desire to listen to the words of those whom he we don’t want to see.”
Only those who closely monitored his career knew that Jeff Nichols was not done with cinema. A filmmaker adored early in his career, born in Little Rock in 1978, the Arkansas native was almost invested in his critical successes (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter) of a heavy paradoxical responsibility, that of saving from danger a certain idea of American cinema (Carpenter, Eastwood) and reinventing it. Including a string of very beautiful films reinvesting the land of a certain classicism while arousing desire on the strength of their synopsis alone – let us remember the fantasy maintained around Midnight Special, neo AND which allowed Jeff Nichols to place himself in the furrow of a Spielberg.
But in Hollywood, fantasy is no longer enough. Too attached to his authorial privileges and a certain brutality of images and feelings, Nichols found himself on the sidelines after the commercial and critical disappointments of Midnight Special And Lovingboth released in 2016. The Bikeriders thus breaks an eight-year hiatus, during which the American was entangled
