For Doherty, the invitation marks his first time serving on a festival jury, something he admits feels a little unusual. “It’s my first participation on this side of the fence,” he said. “I’ve been to film festivals before as part of a film crew, but this is the first time I’m actually sitting on the jury.”
Despite his long career in music, Doherty says cinema has always played a role in shaping his outlook. Some of his earliest influences came not from bands but from film and screen characters, “Some of my first heroes weren’t musicians,” he explained. “People like Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Disney characters… at a very young age those things helped form my worldview.”
However, Doherty also admitted that his film watching habits have been somewhat stuck in the past, joking that his idea of a “modern film” is something made decades ago. “For me a modern film is something from about 1970,” he laughed. “I tend not to watch a lot of new films, but that’s changed this week because I’ve been watching so many.”
Serving on the jury has meant watching a wide range of contemporary films, often alongside experienced professionals from across the industry. Doherty said that has led to some interesting discussions. “You come out of a screening thinking ‘that was amazing’ and some of the others say ‘no, you’ve been manipulated, we knew after five minutes what was going to happen’,” he said. “But I was the one crying sometimes, absolutely.”
Doherty has also experienced life on the other side of the camera. His life and career were the subject of the documentary Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin, though he admits that period of his life is a bit of a blur. “A lot of that documentary was filmed during a period when I was… well, not exactly present,” he said. “I don’t really remember the camera being there much.”
While he might feel like an outsider in the film industry itself, Doherty says he is enjoying the chance to experience cinema from a different perspective this week. “As someone who just enjoys film, I’m very happy to be here,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity to discover things I might not normally watch.”
The Luxembourg City Film Festival continues through to Sunday with screenings, discussions and events across the capital.
