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Kiss the Future director Nenad Cicin-Sain had a tall task when pitching his documentary film. He pitched it to the members of U2, who met him for lunch at Adam Clayton‘s house. The director ultimately made the film and remembers quite well what Bono‘s reaction was.
The documentary chronicles U2's “PopMart” tour stop in Sarajevo. This came years after promising to make it amid their conflict in the nineties. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. lent Cicin-Sain and his crew the footage of the concert. The concert had previously never been released publicly.
All of this created a high-pressure situation for Cicin-Sain and Co. They had to stick the landing and luckily, they did. After showing the band the film, the director received a call from Bono himself.
Bono's emotional Kiss the Future reaction
Speaking to ClutchPoints about Kiss the Future, Nenad Cicin-Sain recalled his phone call with Bono. He was shopping with his wife at Whole Foods when the call came in. Like anyone would do getting a call from the U2 frontman, he ran to his car.
“I was in Whole Foods shopping with my wife, and she had left for an aisle, and my phone rang,” Cicin-Sain recalled. “And it was a no caller ID [number], and I was like, ‘Should I pick this up or not?' And I answered and I heard, ‘Hey, it's Bono.' I go, ‘Who?' He goes, ‘Bono.'
“I was like, ‘Oh my God!' And it's also because it was so loud in the Whole Foods, so I ran out and went into my car. And he told me a beautiful story about how he had asked his son to watch the film with him and they watched the film together and they were very moved by the story and seeing [it] brought to life again, what they had gone through and what the people of Sarajevo had gone through,” he continued.
Their conversation lasted around 45 minutes before Cicin-Sain's wife returned to the car. “We talked for about 45 minutes or so, maybe an hour, and started crying,” the Kiss the Future director said. “I mean, it was so beautiful. And then the funny thing is my wife was like, where the hell is he? So she kept trying to call my phone and I kept sending her to voicemail.
“I heard the rear hatch of the car open up and that's her with the groceries lugging them out of the supermarket and echoing through the speakers was Bono's voice talking very affectionately about the film. I turned back and saw my wife and she gave the, ‘What the F?' look,” he added.
“It was one of those beautiful surreal moments that you get to experience once in a while as a filmmaker and that was a really special one,” Cicin-Sain concluded.
Kiss the Future will be released on February 23.
