Coming up with original or unused titles must be one of the hardest parts of making a true-crime documentary. A Killer Story sounds a lot more generic than this three-part series really is, but it’s difficult to sum up the documentary in just a handful of words. The gist is that it centers around a double-homicide case in which a woman is accused of murdering her ex-husband and his girlfriend. On top of that, it follows a couple with no direct connection to the case who are obsessed with proving the woman’s innocence. It’s driven by an investigative reporter from The New York Times who also became hooked by the mystery and bewildered by the twists uncovered throughout the six-year filming of the documentary.

The first of the three episodes introduces all the characters. The reporter, Joe Sexton, is our narrating guide, and he curses like he can’t control it. He’s a great f’in stand-in for the viewer’s own curiosity and inquiry. The couple, Eileen and Keen, seem to be a folksy pair who love true crime, making them initially quite relatable to the audience. Then there’s the alleged killer, Dana Chandler, who is never a direct participant in the series and therefore not easily judged through the documentary itself. A Killer Story begins with an apparent desire to be some profoundly immersive work of creative nonfiction à la In Cold Blood, with the Kansas setting to boot. The middle episode, however, goes through the typical motions of a documented trial, and the finale loses some of its steam, though that feeling befits the way the story runs its course.

A Killer Story is admittedly one of the more addictive true-crime miniseries I’ve seen in a while. It’s structured perfectly to engage and captivate, and its first two parts end on cliffhangers that are satisfyingly dealt with quickly in the following installment. The series maintains and leaves us with several pressing questions about the case while also implicitly examining issues with the justice system (this story involves multiple, disparate trials, which is fascinating) and the motivations of true-crime enthusiasts and citizen sleuths who influence proceedings. The star of the documentary isn’t the case, though. It’s Sexton, who also gets the last word on everything we’ve been shown inside and outside the trial. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got his own show after this.

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NEWS

Primtime (Lance Oppenheim, 2026).

• Meryl Streep and Laura Poitras have come aboard as executive producers on Julia Loktev’s upcoming documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile (2026), the second part of Loktev’s profile of independent Russian journalists operating in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, which recently had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. In a statement, Streep describes Loktev as “the Samuel Pepys of Putin’s Russia” and describes her films as a “blazing achievement.”
• Two surprises have recently happened on the festival circuit. The first is that Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial (2026), which was dropped by Amazon MGM Studios in June, will have its world premiere at the New York Film Festival followed by a Gala screening at the London Film Festival. Secondly, the Telluride Film Festival’s secret screening was revealed to be Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s three-hour documentary You Can See Everything (2026) about Elizabeth Holmes.
• AMC has launched its own distribution company, Leawood Films, which will focus on “small and mid-budget sized movies” from “emerging and established filmmakers.” This arrives on the heels of the success of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (2023), which AMC directly released into theaters after striking a deal with the eponymous popstar.
• Television presenter and YouTube personality Chris Hansen has purchased preshow advertising before every screening of Lance Oppenheim’s psychological thriller Primetime (2026), which chronicles Hansen’s tenure hosting To Catch a Predator (2004–07). The ad reportedly directs viewers to Hansen’s streaming network TruBlu where he continues his predator investigations.

DEVELOPING

Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025).

• Lea Seydoux and Bill Murray are set to star in Ursula Meier’s The Quiet Land, which is reportedly influenced by the work of Swiss police photographer Arnold Odermatt, and will be lensed by Agnès Godard.
• Renate Reinsve is set to star as Mary Wollstonecraft in Mia Hansen-Løve’s If Love Should Die, which chronicles the last twelve years of the English writer and philosopher’s life amidst the French Revolution.

REMEMBERING

9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980).

• Dolly Parton has died at 80. The American singer-songwriter and actress achieved initial success in country music by appearing on the weekly variety series The Porter Wagoner Show (1960–81) beginning in the late-1960s. She and Wagoner became a popular duo for nearly ten years before Parton pursued a thriving solo career. In between touring and releasing hit studio records, she starred in her own variety series Dolly! (1976–77), made frequent appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–92) that boosted her popularity, and co-starred in many television specials headlined by Mac Davis and Cher. She made her feature film debut in 9 to 5 (1980) and wrote the film’s theme song, which was nominated for both an Oscar and a Grammy. She went on to star in a string of films over the next decade: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Rhinestone (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), and Straight Talk (1992). Up until her death, she continued to regularly appear on television in made-for-TV films and sitcom cameos. Her final film was the Emmy-award winning musical drama Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020), for which she produced and wrote the music. “I never knew anyone like her,” remembered former costar Jane Fonda. “She was simultaneously a naughty, playful southern gal from the hollows of Tennessee and a deep, soulful thinker who could see through people right down to their true selves.”
• Tim Curry has died at 80. The English actor quickly garnered international recognition for his performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in both The Rocky Horror Show stage production and its 1975 film adaptation. Curry went on to have a prolific career on screen and stage, moving easily between live-action and voice roles. Some of his most memorable live-action film performances include Wadsworth in Clue (1985), Dr. Yevgeniy Petrov in The Hunt for Red October (1990), and Mr. Hector in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. He also received praise for his turns as Pennywise the Clown in the two-part miniseries It (1990) and Nigel Thornberry in the animated series The Wild Thornberrys (1998–2004). Along with regularly performing on stage, racking up accolades for playing Mozart in Amadeus and King Arthur in Spamalot, he also released three rock albums, voiced numerous audiobooks, and continued to reprise Dr. Frank-N-Furter for various charity and anniversary events.  “I don’t fear death,” Curry said a year prior. “I try to avoid it, as I think we all do. But, I suspect that in the end, I will welcome it.”

RECOMMENDED READING

One Night Only (Will Gluck, 2026).

• “The category is a capacious one, encompassing reclusive geniuses, thwarted iconoclasts, and tragic shooting stars. Some of these artists make only one movie. Some make more but resist the temptations of a prolific career, because of their own exacting standards, the challenge of raising money to make films, or forces beyond their control … In all cases, though, the scarcity of the films combines with the often distinctive nature of the work to capture our collective imagination, giving the reticent auteur a magnetism that, while not exactly unearned, also speaks to our own attitudes toward the creative act.” For The Yale Review, Bilge Ebiri examines various “reticent auteurs,” including Charles Laughton, Barbara Loden, and Víctor Erice, and their unique value in an increasingly algorithm-driven economy.
• “The Chronovisor is a hauntological invention, and in her research, Dr. Courte has cause to bring dead tech back to life. In one case she reassembles a video, detangling and manually winding a snarl of magnetic tape. She also watches a segment of the French-Canadian TV newsmagazine Camera ’89 profiling François Brune, a French priest and collaborator of Ernetti, who made his own attempts to use technology to rouse the dead. The media is the medium, though the message is garbled: When Camera ’89 plays a tape of Brune’s, the speech is raspy, barking, an almost entirely incoherent squawk to match the quality of the tape itself. An aura of unreality grows around the subject as information becomes sparser; things that were once common knowledge fade into irrelevance and dispute.” For The Baffler, Mark Asch reviews Kevin Walker and Jack Auen’s Chronovisor (2026) and how it fits within and exemplifies the “academic mystery movie.”
• “[Will] Gluck’s touch is very light, but the movie’s obsession with credibility means most characters we get to meet stop to point out their dislike for the law. Whoever supports this thing is kept carefully offscreen. At most, we get a drunken rockstar going into a ramble about maybe the conservatives had a point because this makes who you pick to spend the night with special, right before getting increasingly creepier and falling into his face. The most chilling moment comes early when Turner remarks that most of his friends got married the previous year, the implication being that they just settled into marriage for convenient intimacy. The real crime is the one against the romantic comedy promise: you are not supposed to marry to find a fuck buddy.” On his Substack, Filipe Furtado unpacks the recent high-concept rom-com One Night Only (2026) and how it embodies the fictions Hollywood loves to tell.
• “The pre-Hitler mood captured in M (1931) finds an echo in films like Civil War (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025). Conflict no longer appears as a temporary crisis but as a permanent condition; politics becomes an endless chain of confrontations rather than a system capable of resolution. Like M, these films imagine a world of eroding norms and ambient violence. Kracauer’s warning, reaching across decades, is not that such outcomes are inevitable but that when a society begins to normalize this atmosphere, it grows more susceptible to the promises of demagogues—and to the conflicts that follow.” For The New Republic, Jimmy So looks back at Siegfried Kracauer’s landmark text From Caligari to Hitler and how the author’s diagnostician lens can be deployed in a contemporary context.

RECOMMENDED EVENTS

Import/Export (Ulrich Seidl, 2007).

• Berlin, through September 24: The Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art presents Here and Now – 
The Films of Christoph Hochhäusler, a retrospective of the German filmmaker’s films tied to an exhibition of his materials at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein.
• Turin, through October 5: The National Museum of Cinema presents My Name Is Orson Welles, which features more than four hundred items across many public and private collections dedicated to the auteur that retrace his unique life and career.
• New York, September 17 through October 13: The Museum of Modern Art presents Yuen Woo-ping: The Number One Martial Arts Director Under the Sky, a retrospective of the filmmaker and action choreographer’s work, from Drunken Master (1978) through Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019).
• Amsterdam, September 19 through January 31: Eye Filmmuseum presents Ulrich Seidl – On Life, Love, and Death, the first exhibition, and a complete retrospective, of the Austrian director’s work in the Netherlands.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• A24 presents a surprise teaser for Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new documentary You Can See Everything (2026), which follows disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as she prepares to go to prison. data-height=”natural”>
• Neon presents a trailer for Fjord (2026), Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning legal thriller starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a couple fighting for the custody of their children after their behavior comes under scrutiny by the government. data-height=”natural”>
• Magnolia Pictures presents a trailer for The History of Concrete (2026), John Wilson’s feature-length debut about the documentarian’s efforts to make a documentary about concrete using a Hallmark-approved commercial formula. data-height=”natural”>
• Neon presents a trailer for Once Upon a Time in Harlem (2026), a documentary about a 1972 gathering of the surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington’s townhouse, originally shot by William Greaves and completed by his son David. data-height=”natural”>

RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK

The Samurai and the Prisoner (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2026).

• “Markopoulos wrote that ending a film is like tying an intricate surgical knot. One must make ‘the best knot for each work; and it is completed forever.’ It must be clean. It is somewhere near three in the morning when the projection cuts off and, though abrupt, there is a sense of finality. Before the screening, Beavers had asked that when the Temenos ends, we hold a moment of silence. These few minutes of quiet are like a canopy. In the dark, in the absence of the projector’s hum, true silence takes on a thick feeling in the air. The screen loses its violet wash as eyes readjust. We wait, until Beavers releases a thunderous ‘Thank you.’” Emma Fuchs reports on the screening of the final four cycles of Gregory J. Markopoulos’s Eniaios (1948–90), the culmination of the Greek-American experimental filmmaker’s magnum opus.
• “The launch of Video Home System (VHS) in the mid-1970s therefore came at the perfect time for Northern Ireland’s cinema lovers, who desired entertainment and escapism but were less willing than ever to leave the comfort and relative safety of their own homes … For the time, the power to control when audiences watched films began to shift from the exhibitors to the audience. Power shifted, too, from producers to consumers, and for the first time people could directly record films or television programs onto blank tapes and play, pause, or rewind at their own leisure.” Sam Manning explores the VHS boom in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when cinemagoing “became less of a social habit and more of an occasional activity that carried a level of potential risk.”
• “The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) is set apart from these other works by virtue of its assertive and imperative qualities. Whereas Kurosawa’s past filmography has sought to elucidate, The Samurai and the Prisoner seeks to prescribe—a shift perhaps commensurate with advancing age and stature (an impulse that finds more satirical expression in the coda of Cloud [2024], which ends with a character offering advice). Murashige is seemingly a self-portrait of sorts for Kurosawa, and after decades of diagnosing the ills of a modern world defined by alienation—and putting his observations in literally or figuratively scarifying terms—the filmmaker now wishes to push, calmly but urgently, for a fundamental, structural change.” Alexis Moon examines The Samurai and the Prisoner in the context of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s career and how the Japanese director has charted a new path with his latest period drama.
• “The contrast with General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq, who overthrew Bhutto in a 1977 military coup and later executed him, has often produced a simplified narrative: of a liberal cultural sphere abruptly replaced by sweeping repression under his ‘Islamization’ drive. Yet Aina (1977) remained in cinemas for a record 401 weeks, well into the Zia period. Censorship until Zia’s death in 1988 undoubtedly affected filmmakers and narrowed the visual grammar of romance, but the shift was uneven rather than absolute: While romancing in an elevator became increasingly unlikely, lovers still had their duets. Far from a total and lasting capture by moral conservatism, post-Zia cinema in the 1990s often turned to overt sexualization to draw audiences back into a struggling exhibition economy.” Manahil Tahira unpacks the legacy of Nazrul Islam’s Aina and the history of erotic depictions within Pakistani culture.

WISH LIST

The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, 2025).

• The Philosophy of Time Travel: The Epic Sequel to the Motion Picture Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s literary follow-up to his 2001 debut feature is available to preorder.
• Rachel Antonoff presents a “Second Coming” T-shirt inspired by Mona Fastvold’s musical drama The Testament of Ann Lee (2025).

EXTRAS

Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2016).

• Screen Slate compiled a list of the 100 most-screened films in New York City across the last fifteen years, sorted by the number of individual screenings, including a column for showtimes.

Venice: Guadagnino’s epic chronicle of his filmmaking idol wends and wades its way through Bertolucci’s complicated career — but where the hell is “The Dreamers”? This fascinating, often exhilarating documentary has plenty to chew on.

Bleecker Street will release the documentary in theaters on October 16.

Last year, the Academy sent a memo reminding Oscar voters that documentaries are eligible for nominations not just in their own category but across others, including Best Picture — something the Oscars has never achieved.

Can you believe that in the Academy’s 97-year history, no documentary has ever been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar? Odds are some of the most acclaimed non-fiction work of the year, especially “Once Upon A Time in Harlem,” somehow won’t pull off a historic surprise.

However, here come Nathan Fielder, and co-director Lance Oppenheim, who has become the toast of Telluride with his meta Elizabeth Holmes doc “You Can See Everything” earning the best reviews of the fest — 92 on Metacritic — and now you have many of the trades’ Oscar experts sounding the alarm on Fielder/Oppenheim’s film potentially making history.

It’s been confirmed by Variety that A24 will be campaigning “You Can See Everything” for best picture consideration, including Variety, TheWrap and THR. Is there a legitimate chance that Fielder’s 174-minute doc cracks the top 10? It’s too early to tell. Every year, much-buzzed films out of Telluride either deflate weeks later, or accentuate the momentum.

The premise alone—Holmes inviting a film crew into her life just 37 days before reporting to prison, with the project ultimately spanning three years—suggests this is going to be something much stranger than a conventional true-crime documentary. And Fielder’s involvement, given how extreme and unpredictable his previous work can be, is obviously resulting in questions of whether this is even a full-fledged doc since “You Can See Everything” is actually a hybrid. According to reports, it’s 90 minutes of a documentary, and then 90 minutes of ..something else entirely.

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. There has been much acclaimed non-fiction these last 40 years which warranted a best picture nom but failed to do so, including “The Thin Blue Line,” “Roger & Me,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “The Fog Of Warz,” “Grizzly Man,” and “The Act of Killing.”

It remains a glaring omission that no documentary has ever been recognized in Best Picture, especially in the 21st century, when nonfiction filmmaking has become increasingly prominent, with Netflix further boosting visibility, albeit with mostly trashy nonfiction works. Hell, we’ve even had animation crack the best picture lineup, three, to be precise: “Beauty and the Beast,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3.”

Why does nonfiction continue to be overlooked? Is it because documentaries don’t dominate the cultural conversation as much? Fielder and Oppenheim might finally have cracked the code with this film — but is it even a doc?

The review embargo has lifted on Alex Gibney’s “Musk,” and with that a teaser — and poster below — have been released as well.

I’m mostly in agreement with Ryan Lattanzio’s “B” grade IndieWire review — which is probably the same rating I’d give. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman is much more effusive in his praise. Other reviews include Next Best Picture (6/10), The Guardian (4/5). The Telegraph calls it a “hatchet job,” while Radio Times says “it’s far from a hatchet job.” At least THR acknowledges that “most people who sign up for the doc will have long ago made up their minds about Musk, so a one-sided argument won’t be a problem.”

The problem with “Musk” isn’t that it’s boring. It’s that it’s four hours long and, for much of that runtime, has surprisingly little new to say about Elon. Still, I can’t say that I was bored; here is such a fascinating figure of our times that telling his story, no matter how biased or unbiased it may be, and with this much detail, is of interest.

Gibney’s doc runs through the familiar Musk mythology — SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, MAGA, AI — but rarely finds a fresh angle on any of it. There are no major revelations, no explosive disclosures that fundamentally alter our understanding of Musk. Instead, Gibney offers a fairly conventional biography of a man whose rise, influence and controversies have already been exhaustively documented. I went in expecting to learn something I didn’t know. For the most part, I didn’t.

The SpaceX and Tesla material is easily the strongest — Musk didn’t start either of them — and the film becomes considerably less interesting once it moves into the post-intermission Twitter/MAGA section. Musk himself emerges as an enormous ego: pushy, provocative, deeply self-aggrandizing. There is something genuinely fascinating about his instincts as a businessman and innovator, and the documentary works best when it explores that side of him rather than simply cataloguing his latest controversies.

Unfortunately, Gibney keeps returning to an AI-generated Musk being interviewed. Since Musk refused to participate, the filmmaker opted to essentially manufacture his own version of him, and the device is every bit as distracting as it sounds. It’s particularly bizarre in a documentary that otherwise wants to examine the consequences of AI and Musk’s role in the technology. Rather than adding anything, the gimmick repeatedly undercuts the film.

The structure doesn’t help. “Musk” isn’t particularly chronological, while his upbringing in South Africa is given surprisingly short shrift — maybe ten minutes at most. The film seems, initially, to be searching for some kind of larger critique of Musk, before gradually settling into a more straightforward takedown. By the second half, it begins turning him into a larger-than-life boogeyman, ticking off the familiar list of Musk’s transgressions without doing much to complicate or deepen them.

There’s worthwhile material here, particularly when Gibney focuses on SpaceX and Tesla and the extraordinary ambition behind both companies. But for a four-hour documentary about one of the most consequential and polarizing figures of the modern era, “Musk” feels oddly safe. I was hoping for something more than just watchable.

“You Can See Everything” will hit theaters this October.

The announcement and teaser for A24’s “You Can See Everything,” a 174-minute documentary about Elizabeth Holmes from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, premiered last night at Telluride to wild reactions. The film hits theaters in October.

The premise alone—Holmes inviting a film crew into her life just 37 days before reporting to prison, with the project ultimately spanning three years—suggests this is going to be something much stranger than a conventional true-crime documentary. And Fielder’s involvement, given how extreme and unpredictable his previous work can be, is obviously the biggest draw.

The teaser feels unsettling, and that’s putting it lightly. Strange lighting, extreme close-ups, prolonged eye contact, and a deliberately surreal presentation. The fact that it’s apparently the real Holmes makes the footage even more uncanny. Has Fielder found a subject whose real-life behavior is so bizarre that it somehow goes beyond the uncomfortable comedy of “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal”?

Another question immediately comes to mind: What could Fielder have possibly done with Holmes for three years?

Holmes spent years convincing investors, journalists, employees and the public that they were seeing one thing, while Fielder has built a career around quietly watching people until they reveal something else. Putting these two personalities together feels like some kind of insane experiment. The fact that the footage already looks like psychological horror makes it even more irresistible.

So what should we expect? Telluride and A24 have asked press who attended yesterday’s secret screening not to reveal plot points. The early reactions have been extremely positive. This doesn’t sound like a conventional documentary built around straightforward interviews. It sounds more like two people trying to psychologically out-weird each other.

The teaser initially looks almost fictional, with Holmes coming across like an actress playing a horror-movie character. Her expressions and staring seem almost too cinematic. Then you remember that this is actually Elizabeth Holmes, which somehow makes it even more disturbing.

Deadline reviewed the film in cryptic fashion, noting its extraordinary access. Fielder retrieves Theranos machinery from storage, captures revealing encounters with Holmes, her partner and her parents, and eventually accompanies Holmes on her final drive to prison. His growing closeness with Holmes leaves even him baffled: “I don’t know why they wanted me there. Why am I there?”

And apparently, the film’s biggest surprise comes after Holmes enters prison, when what initially seems like the end of the story turns into a strange, increasingly noirish second act.

I love Fielder. “The Rehearsal” pushed his ideas further by turning reality itself into something he could stage, rehearse and manipulate. “The Curse” showed he could take those ideas into scripted drama and outright horror. But this Holmes documentary looks like something entirely different. And I have absolutely no idea what to expect.

Telluride: Everything we thought we knew about the beleaguered Theranos founder and convicted fraudster may or may not be true, according to A24’s made-in-secret new documentary.

Rebeca Huntt admits she wasn’t a sports fan. But making a film about American soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe changed all that.

“She’s a really important part of my generation, a once in a generation athlete, a no-bullshit player, a brave woman who stuck to her guns,” Huntt says on the phone from New York City.  “And I need more of those: hardworking, disciplined, glamorous. I’ve always respected athletes but didn’t really watch sports unless someone invited me to see a game live. And now I’ve become much more of a sports fan.”

It’s easy to see why a creative encounter with Rapinoe would have that impact. Rapinoe raised the profile of women’s soccer—check that, soccer, period, in America to spectacular heights, leading the U.S. team to Olympic gold and two World Cup championships, breaking scoring records along the way. She was also open about her queerness, a rarity in 2011. But it may be that her courageous political stances are what set her apart from other high-profile athletes, taking stands for pro-choice and equal pay for female soccer players and, most famously, taking a knee during the American national anthem. Huntt’s documentary takes us through all those controversies in the context of a full-on portrait that tracks Rapinoe’s early childhood through to the last of her playing days.

Huntt’s latest work is nothing like her compelling debut Beba, which played at TIFF in 2021. Beba is a profoundly personal film, an autobiography basically, about Huntt’s family and her upbringing and her often problematic relationships with family members. It’s raw, aching with its own vulnerability, and often experimental in form. Rapinoe gives the athlete’s life trajectory a linear arc and trades Huntt’s own vulnerability for intimacy with her subject.

“To make Beba, the most access I had was to myself,” she explains. “With this one, I was ready to step into someone else’s world.”

Fortunately, Rapinoe was ready to let her in. She talks about the good, like her joy of the sport and her coming out (I can’t decide whether her pink prom dress she wore in her pre-lesbian phase is funny or sad); the bad, like her beloved brother’s struggle with drug addiction; and the ugly, the vicious hostility she received because of her political opinions.

“Megan was extremely open. She was down for it from the start,” Huntt remembers. “We’d be talking and I’d say to her, ‘Time to go into the portal,’ and she’d say, ‘I’m ready and I’m excited to see where you’re going to take me.’ But athletes are very skilled with media. They’re doing interviews all the time and I had to find a way to take her to places she’d never been before.”

She’s successful, creating a film about a bona fide celebrity that’s intimate and reveals her as unique and wholly authentic. Authentic, in that she’s startlingly candid, and unique, in that there probably never has been a natural female soccer talent like hers. Footage of her as a young kid shows her demonstrating intricate footwork and shooting skills way beyond her years. It was clear that she was going to be a star. It’s akin to a child teaching herself how to play the violin and getting into Julliard as a teenager. Except that child would have practiced, whereas Rapinoe, though she was on the pitch almost daily, never really trained. It was Rapinoe’s wife-to-be, hoops star Sue Bird, who told her that she was great but could be magnificent if she embraced a training routine. And she was right. Rapinoe hit the gym after recovering from a knee injury and came back greater than ever.

Not that Rapinoe had it easy. In the film, Rapinoe describes the intense pressure of being a star. “God sprinkles something onto our athletes. To have this God-given talent and then keep playing at the highest level is very difficult,” observes Huntt. “They’re very skilled at handling media and they’ll drop a few posts on Instagram when they’re out and about, so we think they live these luxe lives.” But, she says, the battle to stay the best is a lonely one.

And so is the battle to stick your fundamental values. To make a statement against anti-Black racism in America, Colin Kaepernick led the movement in the National Football League to kneel during when America’s national anthem played before games. Rapinoe followed suit, kneeling during the national anthem in Seattle, where she played professionally, to express her solidarity with Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter in protest of police violence against Black Americans. As the film documents, the reaction was ferocious. Critics wanted her off the team. Fox news commentators were apoplectic. There were death threats.

In the face of it, Megan was unrepentant, although distressed that she was the only white athlete to support Kaepernick. At home games in Seattle, she was mercilessly booed. But she seemed eerily unaffected, something that astonished her teammates. She says she managed the pressure via the classic strategy (usually involuntarily, but not in her case) of disassociation, which is a recurring theme on the doc.

“Well, when you’re playing at that level, how can you not disassociate,” declares Huntt.

Rapinoe in the film takes it one step further, saying her ability to disconnect in the moment fueled her drive to win. “Disassociation,” she says, “made me a killer.”

Huntt traces Megan’s campaign for equal pay for women in soccer in a section of the film in which Rapinoe is at her most eloquent. As the women’s team was chalking up their World Cup victories, they were making one quarter of the money the men’s team was earning. The men had better money, better facilities and better travel arrangements though they’d won exactly zero World Cups. She led an intense campaign for equal pay for female players and in 2016, 28 players filed a discrimination complaint against the United States Soccer Federation. In 2019, when America won the World Cup, fans in the stands responded by angrily shouting,” Equal pay, equal pay.”

In the film, Rapinoe states the case clearly. “I’m working hard, I’m winning, I’m one of the best and one plus one is not equalling two… I’m doing this to create a paradigm shift, not just for women soccer players but for other women athletes and for women in general.”

“She’s the real deal,” says Huntt. “It’s corny but it’s the truth. She walks the talk. She is that person and in the most minute detail and she stands up for what she believes. She wasn’t making millions, but she had a lot to lose. It’s kind of remarkable.”

In a court filing, lawyers for the U.S. team stated baldly why they opposed the women’s claim, citing biological differences. Men, they stated, “have more responsibility and play at a higher level based on skill and strength.” It was a startling admission of basic discrimination.

Rapinoe knew that relying on the assertion that women are just not as good or important as men was a ludicrous, losing argument. Reflecting on the filing, she recalled her amazement, pretending to address U.S. Soccer directly. “You just took that biggest fucking L [loss] and gave it to yourself. I always knew that you felt that way about us and now you said the quiet part out loud.”

When I ask Huntt whether she appreciated the gold Rapinoe gave her in that moment, the director was at her fiercest. “The golden part of it was that they fuckin’ won,” to the tune of a $20 million dollar settlement, making the American women the highest paid female soccer players in the world. “But they shouldn’t have had to play the fucking Hunger Games to make it happen.”

Even counting the brutal backlash to her political activism, facing the end of her career may have been Rapinoe’s most vulnerable time. Only after she retired from playing did she actively undertake the self-reflection that helped her reject disassociation as a survival tacit and embrace each moment with eyes open.

“(In retiring,) she was going through a kind of death,” says Huntt. “Athletes are our rock stars, our gods. She had to figure out how to be useful in the world. These are times that are going to be messy. It was a moment in which someone who embodies greatness was expanding into a reality where that greatness would no longer define them.”

It’s clear that Huntt’s affinity with her subject was a major asset in the making of the film, helping her develop that trust director requires to get the most out of an interview. The more she shot, the more she learned and the more she could empathize with Rapinoe.

“I do relate to the importance of being authentic, and of showing up as you are,” she explains. “Especially for women or any sort of marginalized person, that does put you at risk and makes you more vulnerable; however, showing up authentically is where the real power is. And by power I mean the actual opportunity to take responsibility for myself and live life fully.

“I’m not a lesbian, so I can’t relate specifically to coming out, but I relate deeply to fighting to live your truth.”

Rapinoe screens at TIFF September 10, 11 and 20.

Get all of POV’s TIFF coverage here.

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