Director Sally Potter: ‘I’ve seen the grief Covid-19 causes’
Through a bout of coronavirus and re-edits that saw Chris Rock cut entirely, it has been a bumpy road for the director’s new film
Sally Potter fell ill as soon as she reached France. It was March and, by now, people knew the implications of a fever. The director could have caught coronavirus in any number of ways. In February, her latest film, The Roads Not Taken, premiered at the Berlin film festival. Then she flew to New York, promoting the US release as the city lurched into panic. She re-crossed the Atlantic to London, before leaving again for the remote Auvergne, west of Lyon. Her temperature rocketed. “I spent a lot of time future-gazing. You lie there wondering where you’re going to end up.”
Potter is still in France. Her sickness was the kind they call mild – grim weeks, a slow recovery. Someone close to her died from Covid in that first phase of the pandemic, she says. “So I’ve seen the grief it causes.”