Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is a biography of the philosopher. The life of philosopher Alain Badiou suggests that the reverse of this is also true: from one’s life story, we might deduce an entire system of thought. 

From his birth in Morocco, to the events of May 1968 in Paris, to his twilight years as a nomadic public intellectual, Badiou's own biography is perhaps his most complex and thought-provoking work. He is a man who demands to be considered the ally of both Plato and Sartre, St. Paul and Lucifer, the mathematician and the poet. 

With intimate access, Gorav and Rohan Kalyan have produced the first feature-length documentary about Alain Badiou. By addressing the inherent contradictions in Badiou's life and work through cinematic means, the filmmakers are confronted by the inherent contradictions of cinema itself: thought vs action, interiority vs exteriority, presence vs absence. And in order to bring to their complex subject a sense of empathy, clarity, and critique, they must ask a question as old as the medium: can cinema think?

Gorav Kalyan (director, editor, cinematographer) is a Philadelphia-based filmmaker and co-founder of Nonetheless Productions. Gorav studied philosophy before moving to California in 2006, where he studied Film Directing at the California Institute of the Arts. He was a 2013 Film Independent Project: Involve fellow, and has made feature length films, documentaries, short films and music videos.

He and his brother, Rohan, have collaborated on a number of documentaries. Their recent short film "Letter to the City Yet to Come" (2015) was an essay film about New Delhi, India. It has been screened in international and regional film festivals.

Rohan Kalyan (director and producer) is an assistant professor of international studies and a filmmaker whose work addresses globalization, media and political culture. Rohan is author of “Neo Delhi and the Politics of Postcolonial Urbanism” (Routledge, 2017) and numerous essays in academic journals.

Jaden Adams (producer) is a Seattle-based media theorist and political theorist. Adams is the author of “Occupy Time: Technoculture, Immediacy, & Resistance After Occupy Wall Street” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and speaks regularly at a range of universities and institutions around the world, including in Bogota, Honolulu, Istanbul, London, Melbourne, New York, and Prague.

Norbert Shieh (cinematographer) is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker exploring the subtleties of the everyday. Based in Los Angeles, his films and collaborations as a cinematographer have screened internationally in numerous festivals and venues, including Sundance, Slamdance, AFI, Ann Arbor, Jihlava International, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, CAAMFest, LACMA, REDCAT, Anthology Film Archives and Paris’ Centre Pompidou. 

…

This filmmaking story began back in July of 2014 with the five-day lecture series entitled “Badiou on Badiou.” Organized by the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) at the Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this event featured Alain Badiou himself reflecting on his life and philosophy in an intimate setting. Special thanks goes to Creston Davis of GCAS and Jason Adams for inviting us to document the lecture series. From here we expanded our horizons and decided to make the first feature-length documentary film on Alain Badiou, who was generous with his time both in Michigan and in Paris, France, where we continued our filming in May 2016.

We would like to thank the following institutions for their financial and in-kind support: Pratt Institute, The University of the South, Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Special thanks also to Giulia Caruso and Ki Jin Kim of Nonetheless, Productions for their creative and professional support.

Finally, a big thanks goes to all of those who supported us on our IndieGogo campaign in 2014 when this film was a mere possibility awaiting actualization. We can’t wait to share it with the world!