A Sky Original for Sky Docs and Sky Arts

This unusual documentary lifts the veil on Nick Cave’s visionary world and creative process and is intimately told by the collaborators and closest friends who shape it.

Our entry point into this veiled world is through the characters he creates, amidst a wild and vivid landscape. Look hard and you notice that these symbolic figures often belong to a set of archetypes, such as the outlaw, the shadow, the pilgrim, the divine child, and the prophet. The film sets out to explore these archetypes: do their origins lie in Nick’s world, imagination, or subconscious? Are they mirroring deep or dark aspects of their creator? Or the best - sometimes worst – of humanity, its collective hopes, its most dreadful fears or urges?

The journey is distinctively told by a cast of striking minds who know Nick and his work intimately well: a generation of film makers including his collaborators Andrew Dominik (One More Time With Feeling), Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (20,000 Days On Earth), the legendary directors John Hillcoat and, of course, Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire); musical collaborators Warren Ellis and Thomas Wydler (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), Flea (Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Collin Greenwood (Radiohead) and producer Nick Launay; Nick’s co-author Séan O'Hagan (Faith, Hope and Carnage); the screenwriter and director of ‘The Killing of Bunny Munro’, Pete Jackson and Isabella Eklöf; friends and artistic admirers Florence Welch (Florence+The Machine), author Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), artist Thomas Houseago, fashion designer Bella Freud, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
 
A moving and life-affirming story of inspiration, impact, and influence, the film compellingly charts a path from the transgressive to the transcendental, through the immersive and musical landscapes of Australia, Berlin, and Brighton, via hell and back.

Directed by Mike Christie / A Supercollider Production
65 mins / UHD / 5.1 / 2025