Sundance 2025: It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley; Heightened Scrutiny; Third Act | Festivals & Awards

The non-fiction portion of the Sundance Film Festival is one of the most acclaimed programs in the world. This year’s produced highly buzzed projects like “The Perfect Neighbor” and “Zodiac Killer Project,” but nothing’s perfect. There are always a few docs at Sundance that could be called well-intentioned but formally unengaging. That’s the polite way to describe two entries in this dispatch, but let’s start with the third, a film that avoids many of the traps of the bio-doc by remaining true to the emotional core of its subject, elevating him through memories of his creative passion from the people who were there instead of just sharing stories about why his music was so transcendent.

Said film is Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” a creatively vibrant telling of the life story of the incredible Jeff Buckley, a man who refused to be defined by his famous father, carving his own path through a ‘90s music scene in a manner that would influence millions, including peers like Chris Cornell and Thom Yorke, who reportedly went home and wrote “Fake Plastic Trees” after seeing Buckley in concert. Berg gets to the complex heart of a creative genius, a man who distilled his influences—from Robert Plant to Nina Simone to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan—into something that felt timely, brave, and new. His only proper album, Grace, wasn’t just a critical darling, it’s widely considered one of the best recordings of its era—David Bowie himself called it the best debut album of all time. This diehard fan who can get emotional on just hearing parts of that album agrees, and any praise here for Berg’s doc should be considered in the context of a critic who still feels heartbroken at his early passing.

Berg doesn’t avoid the emotional truth of a man who really broke through on the music scene when he wept on stage at a tribute to his estranged father. She spends a great deal of interview energy on the people who clearly loved Jeff, including his romantic/creative partners and his complicated mother, a person that Jeff adored and protected but also yelled at for getting high in the parking lot during his shows.

His relationship with Tim Buckley was even more complicated. The musician famously left Jeff when he was born, only returning for a few weeks later in his adolescent life, just to leave him again before he died. Interviews and journals make Jeff’s complex relationship to Tim clear in that he avoided being in his shadow as much as possible, pouring himself into his perfectionist approach to music—he wrote and recorded constantly, and the film implies that the pressure to follow up Grace with an equivalent accomplishment led to severe mental and emotional stress.

Berg also gets at some fascinating elements of imposter syndrome that understandably dwelled in Jeff. He was a musical genius, but he also got to meet with, sing for, and even play with some of his idols, wondering how he got so popular in his mid-20s, and even trying to avoid the bright glare of the spotlight that was on him even before Grace was released. (If you want to have your mind blown, listen to the Legacy Edition of Live at Sin-e: Hours of Buckley telling stories, working out original songs, and covering those he loved—it’s a recording of a genius emerging from the clay.)

There are aspects of “It’s Never Over” that are arguably “generic bio-doc,” but Berg and her team feel like they’re honestly endeavoring to channel the creative spirit of their subject instead of just chronicling his accomplishments. I still miss Jeff Buckley. If you do too, this is the movie for you.

A very different kind of documentary plays out in Sam Feder’s interesting-but-traditional “Heightened Scrutiny,” even if the events of the last few weeks give it added emotional weight. It’s indicative of the state of the world to say that a film that features audio of Supreme Court testimony from December 2024 already feels dated, but the truth is that the issues around trans rights have grown even more urgent since Trump re-took office and started spouting and amplifying phobic nonsense yet again. One of the greatest fights of the second Trump administration is going to be how we can even maintain the insufficient level of trans rights achieved by the last one, much less avoid sliding back to less enlightened times. That there is a man like Chase Strangio out there fighting the fight provides a glimmer of hope in a dark winter.

Strangio is a brilliant and passionate ACLU attorney who fought a case before the highest court in the land at the end of last year. Feder tells some of his story but focuses more on the way trans issues are framed and litigated in the 2020s, taking direct aim at the manner in which major publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic have often been lighter fluid on these phobic fires. These articles often shape legal arguments by presenting false equivalency on issues that don’t deserve it. For example, a cursory look the papers would have one believe that the percentage of people who regret gender-affirming surgery is higher than one percent. Just presenting these issues with question marks around them can lead to legal precedent. It’s easily the most interesting aspect of Feder’s film.

The rest is pretty straightforward profile stuff, even if the people profiled are courageous. I’m thinking largely of a young trans girl named Mila, who we first meet in a hearing where she yells at the adults for looking at their phones, and who later says, “They may want to take away our rights, but they will never take away our existence and our pride.” She’s going to have to be stronger than she knows this year, and, likely, during this entire administration. I’m sure I’ll think of her again soon. If only our legislators would too.

Finally, there’s the undeniably personal and heartfelt, but also pretty frustratingly generic and manipulative “Third Act,” a movie that one feels hesitant to be harsh about given the connection between subject and filmmaker, but a movie that nonetheless lacks in formal decisions to really elevate it above well-made home movies.

Sometimes a personal connection between filmmaker and subject can be hindrance. I think another director might have drawn out the international importance of Robert A. Nakamura more than his son Tadashi. Yes, anyone else would have lacked in the emotional register that this film often attempts, but I think someone influenced by Nakamura as much as related to him might have placed his undeniably important life in a greater context.

Nakamura has been called “The Godfather of Asian-American media,” a crucial figure in Japanese-American filmmaking, dating back to 1980’s “Hito Hata: Raise the Banner.” Nakamura helped pull back the curtain on the international shame that is the Japanese internment, himself having been sent to Manzanar in the ‘40s. If that horrific experience was his first act, and filmmaking his second, his son seeks to capture his third act: One in which he battles Parkinson’s disease and comes to terms with his legacy as an artist and father.

Again, Nakamura is an important figure culturally and artistically—so, there’s value in simply raising his profile in a film like “Third Act,” but it’s impossible to shake how much of this film feels like home movies, a clearly intentional act by Tadashi to humanize someone who may have been reduced to a political artist more than a personal one for some people.

I will say that I left “Third Act” wanting to watch the films of Robert Nakamura, and I’m pretty sure that his son would say that’s one of the goals of this project. The truth is that artists have a life long after the curtain falls on their final act, and Tadashi Nakamura is making sure his father’s curtain call is the one he deserves.