Linkin Park’s Joe Hahn on ‘Unshatter’: ‘It’s a Film About Healing’
Categoria: Musica
The documentary Linkin Park: Unshatter hits theaters for a limited release on Sept. 30.
Por Billboard | 29/09/2026
Linkin Park’s reformation and comeback — with a hit album (2024’s From Zero ), three No. 1 Mainstream Rock chart singles and two Grammy Award nominations — is one of rock’s top stories of the decade so far. Now the band is telling the story behind it. The documentary Linkin Park: Unshatter, directed by group member Joe Hahn, hits theaters for a limited release on Sept. 30, five days after it drops the concert album Unshatter (Live in Sao Paulo). That Brazilian concert, held on the day of From Zero’s release (Nov. 15, 2024), is a framing device for the film, which chronicles Linkin Park’s decision to get back together six years after vocalist Chester Bennington’s suicide put the brakes on a career that, since 2000, saw sales of more than 100 million records worldwide, five No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and 19 Top 5 Mainstream Rock singles. “Originally the film was slated to just be that (São Paulo) concert, the actual experience of watching the show. I thought that wasn’t good enough,” Hahn – who, as Linkin Park’s creative director, has been responsible for most of the group’s music videos — tells Billboard via Zoom. “I felt like everything deserved an explanation. I wanted to really show what it took to get back on our feet, to explain how this came about, because there’s so much newness. It’s not a switch you can just flip on; it was really a process. “The process of making this documentary was a healing process as well, because there was so much reflecting involved, and acknowledgement of things that did go right. I think the overall sentiment is a message of hope.” That said, Hahn considers the film’s Sao Paulo performances (Linkin Park played two shows, also on Nov. 16, before nearly 97,000 fans each at the Allianz Parque stadium) to be incendiary highlights. “There couldn’t have been a better place to do it,” he says. “The Brazilians have always begged us to come play there; we hadn’t played there very much before that. And they were just…insane.” Like his bandmates, Hahn had no idea when, or if, Linkin Park would come out of the indefinite hiatus it called after Bennington’s death on July 20, 2017 — the birthday of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell , a friend and mentor who committed suicide two months prior — at the age of 41. “We were just moving, moving, moving since we were kids,” he explains, “gaining success when we’re, like, 20. It didn’t stop, and then it did and all of a sudden we’re in our 40s. For it to have ended the way it did, there are so many feelings that go with that — loneliness, embarrassment, you name it. “I think when we just started talking to each other again, there was a great deal of empathy all around, and openness — and also similarity. We were all going through similar enough things t