KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE Trailer

In 1974, TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck killed herself live on-air in Sarasota, Florida. She was 29 years old. As disturbing as the event was, it’s not the only time a suicide has been broadcast, and the memory of it has faded from public knowledge. It’s funny, given that Christine chose such a public exit, that she is so easily forgotten.

Fussing over dichotomies like that is the whole point of the documentary Kate Plays Christine, which focuses on actress Kate Lyn Sheil struggling to play the reporter in a fictional movie-within-the-movie. That the fictional film doesn’t exist outside of the bits we see in this documentary brings into question the truth of the entire film, so yeah, dichotomies.

How much of Sheil’s preparation is real or staged is wholly unclear when you take a moment to think about that premise. It seems that the film is intent on stretching the line between fictional and documentary filmmaking, and the actresses’ struggle to portray a woman who literally wrote the script on her own death (including what should be said about the incident later) takes the film into meta layers that make it almost unclassifiable.

Whatever kind of film you wish to call Kate Plays Christine, its inquiries into the process of filmmaking, the limitations of re-creating a story, and the very question of whether it is right to unearth certain stories at all, should appeal to many cinephiles.

Kate Plays Christine is directed by Robert Greene and stars Kate Lyn Sheil, Stephanie Coatney, and Michael Ray Davis. It will be released in the U.S. on August 24th, 2016 and in the U.K. on October 14th, 2016. For international release dates, click here.

Do you think Kate Plays Christine should be classified as a documentary? Do you think we need to see the film before making that determination? Let us know in the comments!