David Farnor | On 05, Nov 2021

This film is streaming at the 2021 Raindance Film Festival. For more information on what’s playing online at the festival and how it works, click here.

One of the silver screen’s most iconic stars, Jean Seberg has always been a fascinating figure off screen as well as on. It’s only fitting, then, that she should finally get a documentary profiling her in all her complexities – it’s no surprise that this film, originally released in the USA as Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg, should be retitled to highlight the multifaceted nature of her life and legacy.

The title also lays out the film’s structure, which focuses on her as the Iowa girl thrust into stardom at a young age, as well as the Breathless star who would become an emblem of the French New Wave, and finally as the activist who supported the Black Panthers and wound up a target of the FBI.

The latter was brought thoughtfully to light by Seberg, the biopic starring Kristen Stewart, but filmmakers Gary McGee, Kelly Rundle and Tammy Rundle manage not only to present an accessible account of that challenging chapter of her life but also put it into the wider context of history and her life.

Access is always the key to such endeavours and the film benefits hugely from interviews with those who were close to her, including her sister Mary Ann Seberg and her former husband. There’s warm affection as much as poignant regret for her tragically premature death, and a real sense of the disruption that was brought about by her being cast as Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan.

Her near-death experience on that film is well documented but is revisited here in a gripping manner, before we move on to her wider popularity and fame – including her influential hairstyle and fashion on women in Paris at the time.

The most intriguing chapter is perhaps the one devoted to her eventual connection with the Black Panthers, which takes in her whirlwind romance and the FBI’s distressing surveillance of her. But this isn’t at the expense at the other elements of her life, and there’s a consistent, insightful throughline that highlights Jean’s natural altruism – a compassion and empathy that drove her interest in the Black Panthers’ struggle for civil rights, and also contributed to her charming screen presence.

The film makes sure we get a chance to admire and remember Seberg in action, combining film clips with private photographs and home movies – a satisfyingly balanced mix of the personal and professional. The result is a moving, rounded portrait of an artist whose life encompassed many dimensions – and undoubtedly ended too soon.

Jean Seberg: Actress, Activist, Icon is available to rent on Curzon Home Cinema until 11.59pm on 7th November

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