Frederick Wiseman Hints at Retirement: “I Don’t Have the Energy”

Turning 95 years old on New Year’s Day, Frederick Wiseman has a body of work that could be argued as the most important in cinema history. To view it in totality, he has captured every spectrum of human behavior in work and life. In the most vital restoration project of late, he’s remastered the majority of his work, which is now touring the country and currently playing at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center through March 5. Tied to their retrospective Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution, the director has revealed that Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, his four-hour masterpiece from 2023 about the inner workings of a trio of restaurants in central France, could be his final film.

When asked by IndieWire if he is already working on another project, “No, for the last year I’ve been sick on and off, and at the moment I don’t have the energy. Doing one of these films requires an enormous amount of energy both during the shooting and during the editing, and I just don’t have it. I also have to reconcile myself to the fact that I’m 95. I’ve always had tons of energy, but the last couple of years since I finished Menus-Plaisirs, which was a couple years ago, my energy level has been down and I have a couple of illnesses that drag it down.”

While it’s remarkable to see how active Wiseman has been as a nonagenarian, it’s inevitable his retirement would be on the horizon. Thankfully we still have decades of the most profound documentaries in existence, now newly restored, to discover and revisit.

For more from Wiseman, read our 2023 interview with the filmmaker here and check out the trailer for Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution below.

The post Frederick Wiseman Hints at Retirement: “I Don’t Have the Energy” first appeared on The Film Stage.