What was it like developing that relationship with him? The access is indeed pretty astounding – you’re in the hospital room with him in Australia when he learns he has pancreatitis and you’re one of three guys in the room with him when he announces he’s going to quit touring.
I was fortunate enough to have his trust and his blessing and I’m happy that he let me go on so many years together with him. We didn’t know the end of it or the development of it, so we filmed the whole documentary during three years intensively - of course, it took more than three years because I was on and off from the beginning, and the first two years, it was one show here and there and one tour in Australia and one in Europe and I decided to push the deadline for the film year by year and never give up on the story. It was a super naive idea – we didn’t know what the focus would be, but knew we had a great story, which was to producer in Sweden who achieved so much success in a short period of time. We met at a dinner six or seven years ago in Sweden through a charity project called Hunger Race in Africa, and soon after, we started to talk maybe doing an documentary. Recently in Los Angeles, Tsikurishvili spoke about creating an honest biography of Bergling, how his own grueling schedule contributed to understanding what his subject was going through and creating a celebration of Avicii that will endure. Along the way, the director gathers interviews with the likes of Wyclef Jean and David Guetta to put Avicii’s career into context, speaking to his particular genius as well as the pressure that never leaves to deliver the next hit. Tsikurishvili keeps a running tally of the staggering number of concerts Avicii performs, but although it chronicles the constant grind, “Avicii: True Stories” often taps into the same joy that fueled Bergling to continue to create, showing how a few notes tapped out on his keyboard evolve into a banger for the clubs and sits in on jam sessions with Nile Rodgers and Coldplay that illustrate the real work that goes into each song. While Avicii doesn’t lack confidence, he’s insular and introspective, disappointed with the small talk he’s forced to make at industry gatherings rather than having meaningful conversations with people and as his success grows, so too does his disillusionment with what’s required of him professionally beyond making music as the constant touring takes its toll both psychologically and physically, resulting at one point in pancreatitis. Starting in Stockholm where Bergling can be seen experimenting with different beats as he’d been doing since he was 16, the film considers what happens when this distinctly 21st century artist, more comfortable behind a computer than around people, is thrust into performing in arenas. While Tsikurishvili is clearly uncomfortable speaking about the passing of someone who he grew close to over the course of filming for six years, he can take comfort in doing justice to Bergling by simply being there for his rise, using the remarkable access he was given to tell a story bigger than Avicii when the musician is on the precipice of fame and fortune with such hits as “Levels” and “Wake Me Up” in his early twenties. Of course, there’s an implication of danger as well, which it’s likely Levan Tsikurishvili hadn’t given a second thought to as he was filming Bergling when he said this, but the filmmaker finds himself in an unusual position now, having finished and even released the intimate portrait of the massively successful DJ in some parts of the world before he took his life in April of this year, but due to release patterns, the film is only arriving in America now and internationally on Netflix in another week, seemingly asking to be picked apart for clues about what would lead Bergling to such desperate measures. In an early scene from “Avicii: True Stories,” the Swedish artist born as Tim Bergling describes the feeling of going out on stage as if it was like jumping out of a plane, referencing the exhilaration of looking out over a vast crowd of thousands and taking in their energy to put back into his music.
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