What to Stream: “Sad Song,” an Audacious French Documentary from the BBC’s Online Film Festival
In the absence of theatres, many film-centric organizations have been finding creative ways to show movies—and, moreover, to get movies seen. In the process, they’re overcoming one of the long-standing woes of moviegoing—the extremely limited and localized release of many of the best films. It’s a constant frustration to see great movies playing, say, one week at one New York venue, knowing that they’ll then drop into oblivion until, months or even years later, they come out streaming. The BBC has taken a bold step to help: on Thursday, they launched LongShots, an online film festival of seven international documentaries, all available to view for the next month, free of charge (viewers can vote to determine the winner). I’d read an enthusiastic review of one of these films, “Sad Song,” directed by Louise Narboni, so that’s the one I started with. It’s an intricate and painful docu-fiction that’s as audacious in its concept as it is troubling in its substance. Elodie Fonnard, a classic...