Sundance Review: Barbara Forever Celebrates Pioneering Queer Filmmaker

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The best thing about Brydie O'Connor's documentary Barbara Forever is how it functions as an interesting, engaging movie on its own terms. It concerns the life of filmmaker Barbara Hammer, a pioneer of queer cinema and larger, cultural queer identity. The film is much more than a celebration of a great artist, as it often feels like a Barbara Hammer film itself while evolving into a sharp, clever montage that moves fast and entertains throughout.

Why it matters

Barbara Hammer was a trailblazer who brought marginalized people and queer intimacy into the foreground through her groundbreaking filmmaking. This documentary not only explores her legacy, but also functions as an engaging work of art in its own right, demanding that viewers revisit Hammer's deep and fascinating filmography.

The details

The documentary features plenty of Hammer's films, archival photos, and video to tell her story. It is smart to never make this feel like homework, and the film is often funny, disarming, and quietly uplifting. It opens and closes on Hammer's own beautiful, bare body, and includes a striking sequence where Hammer announces her ovarian cancer diagnosis, followed by a phantasmagorical montage of X-ray images and internal body camera footage that melts into broken celluloid.

• The documentary Barbara Forever premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

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