Earlier this year at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, filmmaker Astra Taylor joined Jacobin’s Micah Uetricht for a conversation about her new film, What Is Democracy?.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Taylor reflects on the relationship between democracy, equality, and freedom, the latter a concept she says the Left “almost abandoned”; right-wing populism, particularly the Right’s conceptualization of the relationship between capitalism and democracy; and the tension between rootedness in the local and thinking at the macro-level, and the dangers of failing to take the power of the transnational seriously.

The transcript has been edited for clarity and concision.