Inside The Arthouse Archives – Laemmle Theatres

Andrius Blaževičius Bemusedly Wonders ‘How to Divorce During the War’

August 26, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Breaking up is hard to do, and it’s only made harder when Vladimir Putin gets involved. In Andrius Blaževičius’ satirical drama How to Divorce During the War, a failed marriage is complicated by the Ukraine invasion beginning the day after a wife decides to call it quits.

How to Divorce During the War opens Friday, Aug. 28^th, at Laemmle’s Royal, Glendale, and Town Center 5. Catch director Andrius Blaževičius on the latest episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

How to Divorce During the War is Blaževičius’ third feature, and like the other two, stars Marius Repšys as a man named Vytas who finds his life going out of control. Returning from his second feature, Runner, is Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė as girlfriend Marija, now his wife. You don’t need to have seen the prior films, and it isn’t clear that they’re in any way connected narratively – in fact, the less you know about this incarnation of Vytus and Marija, the better, as the film slowly unfolds all the important details about who they are and why they might be having problems.

Vytas and Marija live in Lithuania – this film is the country’s official Oscar submission – which is a NATO country, and thus traditionally protected against Russian attack. Yet with the current U.S. administration’s casual attitude towards the alliance, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuanians fear they’re next on the hit list if Ukraine falls. These anxieties move to the forefront once the war officially begins, but they don’t eliminate the practicalities of how to execute a divorce, especially with a child involved.

Marije simply says she doesn’t love Vytus any more. No particular reason is given, at least at first. It seems to be an accumulation of little things: the fading of youth, the vicissitudes of entertainment industry careers, the responsibilities of parenthood, or a same-sex crush in a coworker. Vytus is an old-school filmmaker and screenwriter, which means in practical terms that he’s broke and serves as a house-husband; Marije works in new media, producing viral shorts for the web, and makes enough money doing that to pay all the family bills, though it also surrounds her with young and single people.

TV commentary on the war, about how neither side can come to a compromise, doubles and even triples in meaning, as it could easily be referring to the couple, or to a former Soviet society that becomes violently divided in its sympathies. In their own ways, Vytas and Marije demonstrate performative support for Ukraine, only to backslide the moment their bold stances start to actually cost them anything. It is, as always, the children who suffer most: daughter Dovile acts out at school, and tries to mirror her parents in the best ways, inadvertently holding a mirror up to their behavior that they may be too stubborn to gaze into.

Blaževičius’ signature stylistic move is the slow camera push in towards a character or characters sitting in a car – it’s the one part of their environment they can control, or so they think. He also loves the dining room table as a source of drama: in one of the film’s standout scenes, Vytas subtly undermines Marije with the Ukrainian refugees she’s taken in, by speaking to them in Russian which she doesn’t understand, and pretending it’s all good.

The story begins and ends with the same, still cityscape, suggesting that life goes on regardless, and many of our gestures are futile. Yet so, the film suggests, is our selfishness – in the grand scheme of things, little of it matters, so why not consider the comfortable option? No easy answer is offered, but as everyone onscreen tries to figure it out, their foibles, however “foreign,” may start to look amusingly familiar. To cite but one more example, a scene where Vytus tries to remove his parents’ satellite TV so they won’t watch propaganda “news” channels should resonate just as strongly with American audiences.

“The results are sometimes dramatic but often dryly amusing, capturing the leads’ cushy lives and their often warped sense of altruism in a series of droll vignettes.” – Wilson Chapman, IndieWire.

“A drily witty, subtly searing comedy from writer-director Andrius Blaževičius, “How to Divorce During the War” is both empathetic and surgical as it examines both partners’ attempts to sublimate selfish angst into social activism.” – Guy Lodge, Variety.

Kent Jones’ ‘Late Fame’ Asks if Flattery Gets You Anywhere

August 4, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

For many viewers, it’s hard to recall a time when Willem Dafoe wasn’t beloved and famous. Yet in Kent Jones’ Late Fame, he’s able to embody the delight of a creative artist being recognized late in life, decades after giving up a poetry career for a practical job at the post office.

Late Fame opens Aug. 14th at Laemmle’s Royal, and then the 21^st at the Glendale, NoHo and Town Center. Director Kent Jones and screenwriter Samy Burch will participate in a Q&A following the 7:30 PM shows on August 14th and 15th at the Royal. Jones will also be a guest on Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.

A former film critic, festival programmer and documentarian, the sixty-something Jones knows a bit about late blooming himself. Late Fame is only his second dramatic feature as director, following 2018’s Diane, which scored star Mary Kay Place a Best Actress award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. His newest, like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, is based on a novella by turn-of-the-20^th century Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler.

Jones’ approach, however, is very different – where Kubrick created artificial New York City blocks in London, and put Tom Cruise on a treadmill in front of a rear projection screen, Jones goes street-level in the real thing. There’s a liveliness and sense of space to it, from two-story coffee shops maximizing their vertical space to a surprisingly large single apartment that indicates hidden wealth on the part of its owner.

Dafoe’s Ed Saxberger has mostly accepted his blue-collar status, and is a bit bewildered when a young college student, Edmund Donovan’s dandy-ish Meyers, basically stalks him to his home to shower him with praise. Like Schnitzler himself, Meyers is part of a group of young, aspiring iconoclast writers who believe themselves well-positioned to shake things up. They use only surnames, speak formally, and theoretically eschew technology (to a point).

Gradually, Saxberger begins to enjoy the attention, particularly from showy, uninhibited would-be muse Gloria (Greta Lee). Finally flattered for his intellect, he starts to wonder if his working-class bar buddies are too unsophisticated. But even limited, newfound fame can be ultimately just as empty as the first time around – especially if you’re no longer the same person whose art earned it.

It would be easy to turn the scenario into caricature, with shallow rich kids misunderstanding an old man with real life experience. Jones, however, is more interested in fully developed characters and their nuances than in specific plot beats. These youngsters may be clueless but they genuinely want to be profound as well; Gloria’s performance art at one point is demonstrably so terrible that it stops the movie and the audience in its tracks, yet she can still deliver a meaningful poetry reading while completely high on something, and her life situation turns out to be way more complex than expected.

Ed’s post office career is designed to draw comparisons to author Charles Bukowksi, yet it also demonstrates their biggest point of contrast. Unlike Bukowski, Ed is several years sober, and enjoys his life with a steady government paycheck. He relishes the newfound attention for his work, and is bemused by the idea that he’s been “re-discovered,” but the reality is that a reasonably content, well-adjusted old man just isn’t in the same space as an angry, lovelorn young one breaking the rules of literature.

In real life, someone like Ed could take their cue from director Jones, maintaining an analytical lens throughout his careers that has proved endlessly adaptable, whether to film analysis, documentary, or fictional character study.

“…there’s a satisfying depth to it, and the movie abounds in exquisite grace notes.” – Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter.

“The classic theatricality of its characters juxtaposed with the modern world gives ‘Late Fame’ the feeling of a eulogy for an artistic world that young idealists desperately want to revive.” – Jourdain Searles, RogerEbert.com.

David Wain’s ‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’ Is a Multi-Directional Spoof

July 7, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

As a director, David Wain has made mainstream comedies like Role Models and Wanderlust, but is perhaps better known for his spoofs of same, like Wet Hot American Summer (’80s camp comedies) and They Came Together (big city rom-coms). His latest, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, is more in the latter category…while also functioning as a very loose, unofficial remake of The Wizard of Oz.

Catch David Wain on a new episode of Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass opens July 10^th at Laemmle’s Glendale, NoHo, Town Center, Monica, and Newhall.

Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), her very name an inversion of “Dorothy Gale,” doesn’t get spirited away to a magical land by accident – she goes there very deliberately, after fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) has sex with Jennifer Aniston, who’s in town to promote her generic cookbook. Tom pleads innocent – they had been discussing the concept of celebrity sex passes, which is to say the one celebrity a partner in a relationship can sleep with with no harm, no foul, if they get the chance. Gail, however, didn’t think he’d actually do it, so off she heads to her version of Oz, Los Angeles. She’s on a quest not so much to see a wizard, but rather her celebrity sex pass Jon Hamm, whom she intends to have revenge intercourse with.

Gail gets to L.A by tagging along with her hairdresser friend Otto (an anagram of Toto), played by Smile 2‘s Miles Gutierrez-Riley. As they look for ways to locate Jon Hamm, they accumulate more companions: none-too-bright agent wanna-be Caleb (Karate Kid: Legends star Ben Wang), not-especially smart paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and Hamm’s now-cowardly former Mad Men costar John Slattery. Each has specific goals, but naturally, their real achievements will be attaining brains, heart, and courage.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass isn’t just content to be an L. Frank Baum riff, nor a satire of Los Angeles and the more mundane, tedious aspects of show business. On top of all that, it’s also a parody of ’80s-style MacGuffin comedies like Innerspace, as Gail’s suitcase gets accidentally switched at the airport with a look-alike containing evil plans for destroying the world’s financial systems. This puts Gail in the crosshairs of Ludovica (The White Lotus‘ Sabrina Impacciatore), who fills the role of the story’s Wicked Witch.

Los Angeles residents are particularly likely to laugh at references to local landmarks and specific celebrity hangouts; star maps and CAA also serve as significant plot points. There’s enough here, however, to get laughs from most audiences, as the premise sticks to its absurdity, and its characters are mostly, but not always, oblivious. A former member of comedy troupe The State, Wain has many of his former teammates appear (Michael Showalter is notably absent) along with every celebrity favor he could seemingly call in, from Hamm and Aniston to Weird Al Yankovic and Henry Winkler. Fred Melamed, as Gail’s local mailman, narrates the movie…deliberately badly.

Deutch, who previously impressed as a sex-hungry comedic lead in Zombieland: Double Tap, continues to effortlessly balance sweetness and charm with determination. She’s the most ridiculously perfect, nice woman in her hometown, but absolutely, single-mindedly set on a revenge plan not because she really wants any enjoyment from it, but because it’ll even the score. It takes a lot to make sex with Jon Hamm feel like a relatable, realistic goal, but as the plot proceeds, audiences should feel like he might actually be the bigger beneficiary – any man should be so lucky as to have someone who can be simultaneously as naughty and as nice as Gail Daughtry.

This kind of comedic tonal balance, between sincere rom-com and utter mockery of same, without too much cynicism, is also a sweet spot for Wain. One could say that for him, there’s no place like home.

“25 years after Wet Hot American Summer premiered at Sundance, it’s a relief to know that Wain and Marino are still at the absolute top of their game.“ – Christian Zilko, IndieWire.

“…it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.” – Richard Lawson, The Hollywood Reporter.

‘Peter Asher’: The Man Behind the Music

June 17, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many music fans, Peter Asher is one of those names that seems to appear everywhere once you start paying attention. A member of the British Invasion duo Peter & Gordon, head of A&R for the Beatles’ Apple Records, producer of landmark albums from James Taylor to Linda Ronstadt, and a trusted collaborator to generations of artists, Asher has spent more than six decades helping shape popular music from both center stage and behind the scenes.

The new documentary Peter Asher: Everywhere Man traces that remarkable career, revealing how one seemingly modest figure repeatedly found himself at pivotal moments in music history. Helmed by Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, the film combines archival footage, contemporary interviews, and performances from Asher’s acclaimed live storytelling show to create a portrait of a life that often feels stupefyingly interconnected.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear co-directors Goldfine and Geller discuss their fascinating new release with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning with a special Q&A on June 22nd at the Laemmle Royal.

Asher’s story begins in an unusually artistic household in London. His sister Jane Asher’s relationship with Paul McCartney brought the Beatles directly into the family orbit, with McCartney at one point living in the Ashers’ home. Numerous songs that would become part of popular music history were written there, and the documentary delights in recounting how Peter found himself witnessing events that would later seem legendary.

Yet Everywhere Man makes clear that Asher was never merely a bystander. As one half of Peter & Gordon, he scored international hits, including “A World Without Love,” a Lennon-McCartney composition that topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Later, as an executive at Apple Records, he signed a young James Taylor, beginning a partnership that would help define the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s.

The documentary is particularly compelling when examining Asher’s influence as a producer and manager. Working with Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, he helped shape the polished California sound that dominated popular music throughout the decade. Along the way, he pushed for greater recognition of studio musicians, insisting that the talented players behind classic recordings receive proper credit on album sleeves—a practice that seems obvious today but was far from standard at the time.

What emerges is not simply a history of one career, but a tour through several eras of popular music, featuring everyone from the Beatles and Marianne Faithfull to Elton John, Diana Ross, and Randy Newman. The result is an entertaining and affectionate documentary about a man whose influence extends far beyond the spotlight. Even viewers who don’t immediately recognize Peter Asher’s name may discover that they already know much of the music—not to mention the stories—that he helped usher into the world.

“The pleasure of Everywhere Man is that every time you think you’ve seen the wildest piece of Peter Asher adjacency, the next chapter proves you wrong.” – Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

“[The] film does an amazing job tracking the arc of a career of an artist who was really just about everywhere.” – Brad Auerbach, Entertainment Today

The Living Archive: ‘Time and Water’ and the Disappearing Glaciers of Iceland

May 26, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

What does it mean for a glacier to die? That haunting question lingers at the center of Time and Water, the lyrical new documentary from filmmaker Sara Dosa. Following her Oscar-nominated breakthrough Fire of Love, Dosa once again turns toward humanity’s relationship with the natural world, though this time through a quieter, more meditative lens. Drawing from the writings and personal archives of Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, the film becomes at once a climate documentary, a family memoir, and a message to the future.

The Living Archive: 'Time and Water' and the Disappearing Glaciers of Iceland — Icelandic Glaciological Society member, Árni Kjartansson, sits overlooking a glacier in Iceland. (Archival Materials Courtesy of Andri Snær Magnason)

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear documentarian Sara Dosa discuss her latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or come see it on the big screen beginning June 5th at the Laemmle Royal.

Structured as a kind of cinematic time capsule, Time and Water moves fluidly between personal memory and geological history. Magnason narrates much of the film himself, reflecting on both his family’s past and Iceland’s rapidly changing landscape. Central to the story are his grandparents, early explorers of Iceland’s vast glaciers whose photographs and home movies from the 1950s lend the film a remarkable tactile intimacy. Dosa blends these archival fragments with sweeping contemporary imagery of ice fields, volcanic terrain, waterfalls, and black sand coastlines, creating a film that feels suspended somewhere between documentary and dream.

Yet beneath its beauty lies an unmistakable sense of grief. The glaciers of Iceland, once thought to be eternal, are disappearing at an alarming pace. One glacier in particular, Okjökull, became the first in the country to be officially declared dead in 2019 after losing the movement that defines a living glacier. That event hangs over the film as both ecological warning and existential reckoning. If glaciers function as archives of the Earth, storing centuries of environmental history within their layers of ice, what happens when those archives vanish?

Rather than relying on statistics or conventional talking-head interviews, Dosa approaches climate change through memory, language, and emotional inheritance. The film repeatedly returns to the idea that landscapes shape not only ecosystems but culture itself: words, stories, songs, and identities passed across generations. Magnason reflects on Icelandic traditions, ancient oral histories, and even the changing meanings of words tied to the natural world as species disappear and environments transform. Perhaps, Magnason contends, memory itself functions like a glacier: accumulating layer upon layer, fragile yet enduring until suddenly it begins to melt away.

By the end, Time and Water becomes less a film about glaciers alone than about the responsibilities we inherit from the past and pass onto the future. “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done,” Magnason writes in his somber epitaph to the Okjökull Glacier. “Only you know if we did it.”

“A pensive, reflective film which combines striking Super 16 archive material with a deft exploration of the way the narratives of our lives are intertwined with the lands we inhabit.” – Wendy Ide, Screen Daily

“A poetic musing on intergenerational memory, a whimsical, yet staunchly political elegy for the glaciers, and a mournful look at the Earth in all her majesty and mystery.” – Marya E. Gates, IndieWire

The Last Great Maestro: Inside ‘Bernstein’s Wall’

May 19, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

There was a time in American culture when a conductor could become something close to a national celebrity: part educator, part activist, part showman, and part mystic. Few embodied that role more completely than Leonard Bernstein, whose larger-than-life presence animated concert halls, television screens, political movements, and Broadway stages alike. Douglas Tirola’s Bernstein’s Wall revisits that extraordinary life not through conventional talking-head retrospection, but almost entirely through archival footage, home movies, and Bernstein’s own words, allowing the composer and conductor to narrate his story at his own impeccable tempo.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear director Douglas Tirola discuss his latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch one of his live post-screening Q&As running May 21-23rd at the Laemmle Glendale, Royal, and Town Center theaters.

Rather than unfolding as a straightforward cradle-to-grave biography, Bernstein’s Wall assembles an impressionistic portrait of a man whose myriad passions—for music, politics, teaching, sociology, and more—were inseparably intertwined. The result feels less like a summary than an attempt to capture the restless energy that made Bernstein such a singular public figure throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

For audiences primarily familiar with Bernstein as the composer of West Side Story, the film offers a broader look at the figure who became one of the defining cultural personalities of postwar America. Bernstein was not merely a conductor but a communicator, someone who approached classical music with evangelical enthusiasm and a rare ability to make it feel accessible without diminishing its complexity. The documentary’s many clips from his televised lectures and Young People’s Concerts reveal his innate talent for speaking about music with warmth, humor, and genuine conviction, treating audiences not as passive listeners but as treasured participants in something emotionally and spiritually vital.

The film also captures the sheer physical electricity of Bernstein as a performer. Watching him conduct, drenched in sweat and completely consumed by the music, one understands why he inspired such devotion. Tirola repeatedly emphasizes Bernstein’s ability to embody music rather than simply direct it, transforming orchestral performance into a kind of emotional theater all its own.

Bernstein’s Wall also thoughtfully explores the tensions that shaped Bernstein’s personal life, addressing his sexuality with unusual candor while drawing from deeply personal letters that illuminate the emotional strain placed upon his marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein’s outspoken activism, too—from civil rights advocacy to antiwar protests—remains central to this portrait of artist-as-advocate, particularly in relation to his now-infamous 1970 fundraiser for the Black Panthers that inspired Tom Wolfe’s term “radical chic.”

Yet for all its historical scope, Bernstein’s Wall is ultimately less about legacy than vitality, as the film continually returns to Bernstein’s overwhelming appetite for life itself. The result is a moving reminder of a singular artist who believed deeply in the power of music not merely to entertain, but to awaken something larger within us.

“A lovely film that will appeal to Bernstein’s most ardent fans, while warmly inviting neophytes into his world.” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

“A thoughtfully constructed tribute that lacks neither cultural and political context nor intimate personal perspective.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

The Architecture of Influence: Assayas’ ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’

May 5, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Power rarely announces itself outright; more often, it is constructed—carefully, incrementally, and just out of view. In The Wizard of the Kremlin, director Olivier Assayas turns to the machinery behind modern political mythmaking, tracing how influence is shaped not only through force, but through narrative. Adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s widely discussed novel, the film approaches recent Russian history less as a fixed record than as something actively being authored, revised, and performed. The result is a work that peers behind the curtain to examine the uneasy relationship between image and authority.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Assayas dissect his latest film with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or catch it in theaters beginning May 15th at the Monica, Town Center, and NoHo 7.

At the center of the film’s world is Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), a former artist whose creative instincts find an unexpected outlet in the realm of political strategy. Through his eyes, the film moves from the cultural upheavals of the late Soviet period into the consolidating power structures of the Putin era. Baranov is less an ideologue than an architect, someone who understands that, in a media-saturated age, perception can be even more decisive than policy.

If Baranov provides the film’s perspective, it is Jude Law’s Vladimir Putin who supplies its gravitational pull. Eschewing caricature, Law delivers a performance that captures the controlled, often inscrutable presence of a leader who communicates as much through restraint as through declaration. Small gestures—a pause, a glance, the measured calibration of distance—become telling indicators of authority. Rather than attempting to decode the man entirely, the film uses these moments to suggest how power can be projected through absence as much as through expression.

Assayas, whose previous films—from Clouds of Sils Maria to Personal Shopper—have explored identity and performance in more intimate contexts, here scales those concerns up to the level of geopolitics. His collaboration with writer Emmanuel Carrère foregrounds dialogue and ideas, particularly in the film’s extended exchanges between Baranov and the many oligarchs, financiers, and political operatives who orbit him. These conversations, often laced with dark humor, become the film’s engine, illustrating how competing ambitions gradually coalesce into a singular, rigid system.

In this sense, The Wizard of the Kremlin positions itself less as a definitive account than as an inquiry into how such accounts are formed. It suggests that the real story lies not only in what happened, but in how those events were framed, disseminated, and ultimately absorbed. For viewers drawn to political dramas that prioritize ideas alongside performance, the film offers a dense, thought-provoking exploration of power that resonates beyond its immediate setting.

“A sharply-written, and often surprisingly funny, look at power in one of the most unique nation-states in the world.” – Chris Harrison, Shifter Magazine

“Essential viewing for understanding the highly sophisticated workings of a totalitarian propaganda state.” – Travis Jeppesen, BFI

No Silence, No Sponsors: Amy Goodman and ‘Steal This Story, Please!’

April 15, 2026 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

At a moment when the boundaries of journalism feel increasingly unstable, Steal This Story, Please! makes a compelling case for returning to the fundamentals. The documentary follows Amy Goodman across decades of reporting, but it resists the familiar arc of a career retrospective. Instead, it focuses on the daily discipline of the work itself: the persistence required to ask difficult questions, to verify what others would rather obscure, and to keep attention fixed where it is most needed. Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin frame their subject not as an outlier, but as a practitioner, someone committed to a method in a media landscape that often rewards speed over substance.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to catch Amy Goodman and co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin discuss their latest work with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge, or come see it live beginning April 15-17th at the Laemmle NoHo, Royal, and Glendale theaters, kicked off by a series of post-viewing Q&As.

What distinguishes the film is its emphasis on process. Rather than assembling a greatest-hits reel, it lingers on how reporting actually gets made: the calls, the research, the careful construction of segments piece by piece. This attention to labor grounds the film, turning “independent media” from an abstract label into something concrete and observable. Through archival footage and present-day scenes, the documentary collapses time, suggesting that the pressures journalists face—political, corporate, cultural, and more—are less cyclical than continuous.

The portrait that emerges is neither hagiographic nor detached. Goodman’s on-air clarity is paired with glimpses of the toll such work can take: the physical risks of field reporting, the emotional weight of bearing witness, the constant recalibration required to maintain focus in a shifting news environment. Yet the film also makes space for the little moments of humor, collaboration, and shared purpose that sustain such work over time. The newsroom is not presented as a platform for a single voice, but as a collective effort shaped by many hands.

Running beneath it all is a larger argument about what journalism is for. The film challenges the notion that neutrality requires distance, instead suggesting that rigor and empathy can (and perhaps must) coexist. By centering those most affected by policy and power, Goodman’s approach offers a different kind of orientation, one that prioritizes context over spectacle and accountability over access.

If the title carries a note of provocation, the film earns it. Steal This Story, Please! is less concerned with ownership than with circulation, an insistence that information only matters if it continues to move, to be tested, and (ideally) to ripple outward. In that sense, the documentary functions as both portrait and invitation: a reminder that the work of journalism is ongoing, collective, and, at its best, indispensable.

“A profile in courage, presenting Goodman as an unrelenting voice of the voiceless who is never afraid to get arrested or make an enemy in her pursuit of telling her truth.” – Christian Zilko, IndieWire

“Steal This Story, Please!… builds a convincing case for the ability of dogged, courageous reporting to mobilise pressure against injustice and effect change.” – Lee Marshall, Screen Daily