All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

It is Goldin’s courage and determination that make her an effective activist, and her empathetic eye that makes her a great artist.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed lives up to its promise. It’s a brilliant, compelling, confronting examination of Goldin’s work through the years.

A tremendous documentary, a striking piece of work that is so tender yet biting.

What becomes clear from the film, which vividly details the cultural backdrop as well as Goldin’s work, is that fear has never been part of Goldin’s vocabulary, either creatively or personally.

The wonder is how the different aspects of the project — biography, elegy, contemporary journalism — dovetail so seamlessly.

Whatever one’s familiarity with this searing chronicler of lives on the margins, the film is riveting and essential.

There’s a lot of information and story in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, but it never feels heavy, dull, or long-winded.

Poitras never shoots Goldin in a way that lionizes her or gives her the stature of a warrior queen... She puts her camera squarely in front of Goldin and shows her at work. In the process, she makes a stupendous work of her own.

As profoundly and poignantly as any of the photographs the subject would go on to make.

The Golden Lion-winning All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a ravishing documentary that has Laura Poitras delivering her most fascinating and emotional work.