Q&A with filmmaker, Minco van der Weide
A bite-sized interview for your Sunday morning.
If you would like to be profiled in this newsletter, here’s how.
Read “Portraits of Philosophers”:
Click image below to find out more.
CLICK HERE to get 30% off a signed and numbered hardcover coffee-table edition!
Q&A
Describe your ideal reader.
My ideal reader is curious. They're someone who enjoys being challenged and doesn't mind feeling uncomfortable when their assumptions are questioned. They're not necessarily trained in philosophy, but they're drawn to big questions about how to live.
They're reflective by nature, and represent the kind of person who thinks about their choices and wonders if they could be doing better. They read not just for entertainment or information, but because they genuinely want to grow. When they encounter an idea that conflicts with their beliefs, their first instinct isn't to dismiss it but to sit with the discomfort and see what they might learn.
This reader is practical. They care about ideas, but they care just as much about how ideas translate into daily life. They want to know not just what philosophers think, but how philosophical thinking might change how they treat their family, approach their work, or engage with the world's problems.
They're also honest with themselves. They recognise their own moral struggles and contradictions. In these portraits of thinkers wrestling with life's deepest questions, they see reflections of their own search for meaning, purpose, and better ways of living.
Most importantly, they're willing to act. When something resonates, they experiment with it, they change a habit, start a difficult conversation, or take a stand on something that matters.
If there’s one thing I hope they take from this work, it’s what my former professor once told me: philosophy isn’t about having the right answers, but about asking the right questions. I hope this book gives them the courage and clarity to do just that.
Which philosophy or philosopher most aligns with your own beliefs?
Kierkegaard fascinates me precisely because he embodies the contradictions I find most compelling in philosophy. Here was a philosopher so committed to exploring ideas honestly that he created many pseudonyms (from Johannes Climacus and Johannes de Silentio to Anti-Climacus), each representing different philosophical positions he wanted to inhabit fully. He understood that to truly examine a way of thinking, you must live inside it, not just analyse it from the outside.
This approach resonates with how I see philosophical inquiry. Kierkegaard didn't just write about despair, faith, or anxiety, but he could be said to write from within these experiences. His pseudonymous works allowed him to explore the full spectrum of human existence without the constraints of having to maintain a single, coherent position.
Another draw to Kierkegaard is his insistence that truth is subjective, not in a relativistic sense, but in recognising that the most important truths must be lived. His famous declaration that "truth is subjectivity" speaks to something I believe deeply: that philosophical insight without personal transformation is incomplete.
While I don’t share Kierkegaard’s profound religiosity, his emphasis on individual choice, authentic existence, and the courage to live with uncertainty feels remarkably contemporary. He saw that modern life would increasingly demand that we create meaning rather than inherit it. His concept of the "leap of faith" applies beyond religion to any moment when we must act despite incomplete knowledge, which is essentially every significant choice we make.
As the father of existentialism, he gave us permission to embrace anxiety as a sign that we're taking our freedom seriously. And I would suggest that in today's world which often demands false certainty, Kierkegaard championed the difficult honesty of living with questions.
Is there an interview question you wish someone would ask you? How would you answer it?
I actually wish more people would ask themselves “Who is speaking, and why?”.
We need this question everywhere from politics to business, but we need it especially in philosophy, where we too often treat ideas as if they float free from the bodies and lives that created them.
Philosophy doesn't happen in a vacuum. Behind these argument stand people, people with a particular body, living through specific circumstances, writing at a particular moment in history. Kant wrote as an aging bachelor in Königsberg who never traveled more than forty miles from his birthplace. Nietzsche wrote as a sick man, increasingly isolated, watching European certainties crumble. Simone de Beauvoir wrote as a woman in a world that barely recognised women as philosophical subjects.
Paying attention to these circumstances might enrich and clarify these arguments, and allows one to understand why these ideas emerged when and how they did. Ideas usually grow from the soil of lived experience, historical moment, and human need. Knowing that soil might make us better interpreters of the fruit.
Minco van der Weide is a photographer and filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of ideas and human experience. He holds an MA from the UK's National Film and Television School and studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics in London, followed by Philosophy and Digital Humanities at Cambridge, where Portraits of Philosophers began as a documentary film project.
His work has been featured internationally, including at the Venice Biennale. Through Platonic Films and now Platonic Press, he bridges visual arts and philosophical inquiry, creating work that fosters reflection and makes philosophy accessible to broader audiences.