Paul Carlin

In the face of a cancer diagnosis, French artist Prune Nourry considers her own creative legacy in this singular, self-directed docu-memoir.

“If I could have a secret superpower, it would be to heal with my hands,” says French artist Prune Nourry in her autobiographical documentary “Serendipity.” It’s an understandable enough admission, given that she was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 31, fighting a battle against it that included undergoing a mastectomy, harvesting her eggs in advance of chemotherapy, and a tough personal reckoning with her changed body. It would have been easier, of course, to heal herself by her own touch — except in Nourry’s view, that’s essentially what she did, albeit through art rather than science. “That’s why I’m a sculptor,” she says, gesturing toward her own busy, clay-acquainted hands: “Serendipity” documents creativity blossoming from misfortune, positing that, alongside medicine at least, it’s inspiration that has kept Nourry alive.

Variety

All sorts of weird stuff starts happening as Theroux reiterates the sheer nastiness of the organisation in his provocative documentary

The Church of Scientology is a deeply strange organisation and, appropriately enough, Louis Theroux has made a strange film about it. It works as a companion piece to another documentary, the one that I think is the definitive takedown: Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, from 2015. It’s an interesting, if flawed piece of work; Theroux’s opaque manner masks an uncertainty as to exactly what he wants to say, and he finally seems to turn on his own chief witness.

Theroux’s Scientology movie is undoubtedly a smart piece of what could be called improv-ocation. He shows up in LA, advertising his intention to film a series of scripted and unscripted scenes recreating key moments from the life of the Scientologists’ sinister chief, David Miscavige. (Theroux may here have been inspired by Josh Oppenheimer’s modern-classic documentary about the Indonesian tyranny, The Act of Killing.) He will audition actors, film the audition process, and use as his adviser a famous apostate and whistleblower, former Scientologist enforcer Marty Rathbun – a man now hated in the church for his betrayal.

The Guardian