Partners
: Work
The Safdie Brothers are filmmakers based in New York. Since their feature debut with "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" (2008), Josh and his younger brother Benny have been steadily moving forward in their careers: "Good Time" (2017) was selected for the main competition at Cannes Film Festival, running alongside world-famous masters and prodigies, and with this achievement and more under their belts, the brothers are well on their way to stardom. We spoke with these American independent film frontrunners about their father, Alberto Safdie, who has served as the inspiration for several movies and influenced their overall filmmaking practices.
I’ve heard that your father inspired you two to become filmmakers.
Indirectly, yeah. When we were kids, he was working in the diamond industry and bought a camcorder. It was one of the first with a digital chip, and they’d branded it 'America’s most popular camcorder'. Our father was a big cinephile, and I don’t know if he’d wanted to be a director or something, but he just filmed everything. My friends’ parents with camcorders would only film the important moments, like birthdays or special events, but he would film stuff like me playing with toys in the corner of my room. To the point where, as a little kid, I’d start asking myself, "What’s so important about what I’m doing right now?"
Everything became special occasions with him around, even totally mundane stuff. I remember going to our friends’ parties and he would be there filming random weird things instead of focusing on us or the friend.
Then every month or so we would just watch what he shot. He’d play it for us.
I don’t think he was intentionally filming boring stuff, though. He didn’t do it on purpose. I guess it was a way of reflecting on things, like a defense mechanism. When he had to teach us something or have a serious discussion, he used film instead of talking to us directly.
Did your father’s videos influence your work? Was there any specific film or video that had a particular impact on you?
I can’t remember any specific video. We were mainly influenced by his shooting style.
You mean how he focused less on special events than on scenes from daily life?
Yeah. And that’s how we’ve been making movies, but we weren’t conscious of the fact that he was influencing us. Emotionally you kind of realize it, though back then it was all subliminal. But I guess he was the one who taught us that being comfortable in front of the camera really just means knowing that any moment can be special if you focus on it in the right way. We weren’t aware of it at the time, but looking back now and thinking about it, it’s like, "Oh, maybe that’s where that came from."
PHOTOGRAPHY by Nick Sethi INTERVIEW by Momoko Ikeda EDIT by Takuhito Kawashima
This story was published in PARTNERS #2. In 2024, headlines in the New York Times read, "Safdie Brothers are done making movies together". I was surprised to see the article, but that is also the fate of a partnership. Each of them will continue to explore and express what they want to do, but as long as they are brothers, love film, and have their father, Alberto Safdie, who influenced their filmmaking, there is a faint hope that we will be able to see a movie made by the Safdie Brothers again someday.