Q&A: Avicii documentary director on celebrating the late, 'timeless' DJ without exploiting his death

Avicii, the groundbreaking Swedish DJ-producer, died six years ago. He was 28. It was a tragedy that reverberated around the world — much like his music, which brought unexpected genres and collaborators into his melodic EDM through forward-thinking, chart-topping hits like “Wake Me Up!” and “Hey Brother.”

On Dec. 31, two new movies, a short concert film captured at what became his final performance, “Avicii — My Last Show,” and a full-length documentary, “Avicii — I’m Tim," will premiere on Netflix. They work to celebrate the artist born Tim Bergling, capturing his early life, the songs that made him an idiosyncratic talent, his insatiable curiosity and hunger for reinvention, and the people he left behind.

Miraculously, Bergling himself narrates a lot of the film — pulled from archival interviews and some never before published.

Capturing Avicii's life and career was no easy feat, director Henrik Burman told The Associated Press. The project took half-a-decade, beginning before the pandemic and only about a year-and-half after Bergling's death. Burman's interviews were long and many. “To know people around Tim,” he says, was the only way “to know Tim.”

Burman discussed Avicii's life, career and legacy with The Associated Press. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: How did you approach this project?

BURMAN: I would say from the beginning, the first thing I knew I wanted to do was find my story... the story that I wanted to tell about Tim. But the most important (aspect) was time. I wanted this to be a project with no time limits... I wanted it to be a slow process. And I wanted to have a lot of time for research. And the people close to Tim, I didn't want to force them into anything. I didn't want to push it. I wanted them to see and learn what I wanted to tell, you know, my story and my vision.

AP: The structure is compelling; it really focuses on Avicii's life and his biggest songs that shifted genre — you avoid casting his career as “it was the 2010s and EDM was massive.” There's a lot of research.

BURMAN: I had access to a lot of material... I was looking for clues all the time... I’ve watched so, so many hours of, you know, interviews with Tim just to see, “OK, he says this again. And it was like the eighth time that year. OK. That should be important.” ... It was kind of a puzzle and yeah, it was huge research work.

Sometimes, in the material that I had ... he was like, “If there’s a documentary, ever, about me, this should be in it.” ... There’s a story in the film, in the beginning, from (when) he is a kid. He tells a story to the interviewer. And he says, “When I was a kid, I wasn’t like a really nice person. For a few years, I was kind of bullying people. And I was around 6 or 7. And after a while I realized that people didn’t like me, so after a summer, I was thinking about this, and I decided, ’I need to change... and see what happens.' And then people liked me again.” And when he told that story, he was like, “That’s a really important story. That’s a story that needs to be in a documentary, if it’s ever a documentary about me, because that says so much about me as a person.”

I was trying to find clues and stories and listen and... early on, I was quite sure that I wanted to tell the story from Miami Ultra (Music Festival) and what happened there. That was kind of a key moment for me, and that was a huge key moment for Tim. But when I realized that this... needs to be the center of my story, at the midpoint for my story, I realized that I had something to hold on to.

AP: The childhood story reflects his interest in creative transformation, too. How do you aim to capture his spirit and not center his death?

BURMAN: That is hard. I have from the beginning... tried to explain my vision for this film... But I reached out to a lot of friends, and of course his family, and I got their blessing.

When I got this kind of group of people that said “yes” to being in the film that I could start to ask more questions and have deeper conversations. But again, we needed time... I wanted to work gently, that was very important.

AP: And you have footage of Tim in the womb! It is very different than what could've very easily been an exploitative version of the film.

BURMAN: I wanted to make an intimate and personal story and not speculate... to find the right tone, you need time. And since we started work... one, one-and-a-half years after Tim passed, I just knew that we needed time. And, of course, people around Tim needed a lot of time.

AP: What is Avicii's legacy?

BURMAN: You can answer that question in so many ways. But if you’re talking about the music, and the music that he produced and wrote, he was so much ahead of his time, I would say. And you can hear the legacy of Avicii in the music today. You can hear it in the production in new music and hits from today. If you listen to the music — go back and listen to the music now that he released like 10 years ago, it sounds so fresh, modern, and I would say timeless.

AP: What do you hope viewers take away from this film?

BURMAN: Someone said to me that the film is so much about Tim, but at the same time, it’s so kind of universal. And I thought that was beautiful because life is not simple. There are no easy answers. And everything is complex and multilayered. So, that’s what I aim to contribute to Tim's story. And I also really hope that even the most hardcore fans get a new, fresh perspective of Tim as a person and Avicii as an artist.