Nan Goldin revolutionised photography and reinvented the concept of gender and definitions of normality. Besides being a prominent artist, this lesbian woman is also a tireless activist.
All the Beauty and Bloodshed belongs to a rare genre, that of the sublime documentary. The film is multifaceted and follows two tracks that are brutally intertwined.
One is telling the story of Nan Goldin's life and work through her own photographs, her archives and those of her friends, photographers, filmmakers and artists.
The other describes the struggle waged by Nan Goldin and hundreds of activists to expose the role of the wealthy Sackler family, a powerhouse in the pharmaceutical industry, in the so-called "opiate crisis": the massive addiction to prescription painkillers responsible for the deaths of 500,000 people in the United States.
The continuous convergence of the two tracks (the time of the action and the slideshow of the story) succeeds grandly in imbuing the emotion in this great work, which is so political, with an unprecedented beauty and eroticism.
An exceptional, powerful and intense documentary, it received the Golden Lion (Best Film) at the latest Venice Film Festival.
