Opening with her saying “I love being alive”, this documentary about the novelist, filmmaker, critic & feminist turns to her friends, colleagues & lovers to prove just how true that statement was.

But Sontag, who died in 2004, was a complex, often contrary character who could use her ‘celebrity intellectual’ status to personal advantage, and who gave little away emotionally. 

Although clearly a fan, director/co-writer Nancy Kates allows some of her archive interviewees – who include heavyweights such as Norman Mailer, Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sarandon ¬– plenty of leeway to criticise Sontag as well as praise her. She also has actor Patricia Clarkson (The East, One Day) reading extracts from the author’s work to help build a fascinating, rounded portrait of a powerful and strikingly charismatic force in American literature.