An ambitious international odyssey: The record-breaking movie with the most directors
Not to point out the obvious, but there’s usually only one director credited on a movie. On plenty of occasions, there have been two, but very rarely does the list of behind-the-camera talents stretch into the dozens.
Directorial duos don’t often reach the summit of the industry, either, with only a select handful of pairings having ever shared a ‘Best Director’ trophy at the Academy Awards. Increasing those numbers exponentially pushes things far into the realm of experimentalism, but only one of them set a world record.
Perfectly suiting its origins, the main character of the film has more credited directors than any other is a backpack. Not only that but the backpack is being carried all over the world by a character quite literally called MacGuffin. Clearly, the flesh-and-blood protagonist was never intended to be the focal point.
The seed of the idea began with Detroit-based filmmakers Marty Shea and Ian Bonner, who continued expanding their brainchild until it became an international production of epic proportions. Connecting with their myriad of collaborators through the internet, The Owner was the end result.
A true work of world cinema, each of the 25 directors involved in the feature shot a short segment detailing the backpack’s journey through their home country, creating a unique tapestry of styles, visuals, atmospheres, cultures, languages, and vibrancy that tells a single story through more than two dozen different lenses.
The directors involved hailed from such disparate locations as the United States, United Kingdom, Beirut, India, South Africa, Germany, Colombia, Hong Kong, and Austria, filling in the gaps in MacGuffin’s backstory through the trusty piece of luggage he’s hauling with him on every step of his odyssey around the globe.
Guinness World Records verified that The Owner had set a new benchmark. Varun Mathur, who contributed to one of the Delhi-set sequences, told Hindustan Times that “it’s an interpretation of culture through cinema; you get to know how people live.”
In addition to Shea, Bonner, and Mathur, the post-production team were sent into overdrive by The Owner listing Xavier Agudo, Stanislava Buevich, Mike Canzoniero, Francois Coetzee, Martin de Barra, Todd Felderstein, Nicolas Fogliarini, Yango Gonzales, Omer Kula, Nino Leitner, Craig Lines, Vishesh Mankal, Giacomo Mantovani, Steve Murphy, Arne Nostitz-Rieneck, Asmit Pathare, Neha Raheja Thakker, Adam Ruszkowski, Alexander Schoenauer, Sabine Sebaali, Prashant Sehgal, Fahad Saikh, Brian Shephard, Nicole Sylvester, John Versical, and Rafael Yoshida in the credits.
The record was previously held by 2006’s Parisian anthology Paris, je t’aime, which featured segments from 21 different directors, but The Owner managed to eclipse it by drafting in another four to create a cross-continental slice-of-life that tells a simple story through a myriad of different cultural and social lenses.
