ACE presents: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Director: Laura Poitras

2022 / 122min / DCP

Winner of the Independent Spirit Award and Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Film

Part portrait of an artist, part impassioned exposé, Poitras’s compelling, ingeniously structured documentary deftly braids together two narrative strands, one concerning the turbulent life and confrontational work of photographer Nan Goldin; the other concerning the Sackler family, their pharmaceutical empire, and their culpability for the ongoing US opioid epidemic. These discrete narratives meet via public standoff: after experiencing addiction to prescription painkillers firsthand, Goldin campaigns to hold the Sacklers accountable as pushers and profiteers, calling out the international art institutions only too happy to benefit from the family’s tainted philanthropy. Drawing on the testimonial power of Goldin’s work and the artist’s own narration, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed recounts its subject’s confrontation with the Sacklers and her lifetime of art and activism, posing urgent questions about the responsibility of the reckless artist.

Q&A with editor Amy Foote moderated by Joseph Krings, ACE on Saturday, March 25th at 7:30pm

Co-presented with ACE