Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten(2007)
dir. Julien Temple
The Clash frontman, by the campfire, unpolished.
Where to watch: Free: Hoopla, Tubi, Plex, YouTube (with ads), Fawesome; Prime Video subscription; rent $3.99 Amazon/Apple TV/Fandango At Home; buy $10.99-12.99 (JustWatch US, checked 2026-11-08). Verify.Letterboxd ↗
Julien Temple builds a portrait of Joe Strummer out of old footage, animation, home movies and interviews with friends and bandmates, many of them filmed around campfires. It follows him from a diplomat's son at boarding school, through the squats and the 101ers, to The Clash, the years in the wilderness and his late-life band, The Mescaleros. Strummer died in 2002, and the film is part elegy, part argument about what a punk is for.
Why it’s here
It's a film about a man who made a politics out of a band and then had to live with it. What's punk is the whole arc: the squat, the Clash's call to listen to the world, and the later years of trying to be useful. What's pedagogical is how it admits the contradictions, including the privileged start he downplayed and the way he treated some bandmates. Pairs with The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer, England's Dreaming and Please Kill Me. Note: NR; drugs, a family suicide discussed, and a fair amount of swearing; older teens and adults.
Where This Film Lives
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