Sinéad O’Connor Documentary Trailer Released: Watch
Sinead O’ Connor is the subject of a new documentary from Showtime. Nothing Compares – which takes its name from the Prince song Nothing Compares 2 U, which O’ Connor made a worldwide hit- has been billed as a deep dive into the most turbulent years in the career of the controversial Irish singer.
The premium cable network announced screenings of the documentary directed by Kathryn Ferguson, starting Friday, 23 September at Cinema Village in New York and Laemmle Monica Film Center in Los Angeles. The film will then become available to stream for Showtime subscribers on Friday 30 September, with an on-air premiere set for Showtime on Sunday 2 October. Meanwhile, the documentary will release theatrically in the U.K. and Ireland on Friday 7 October.
A statement from Showtime says the film “charts Sinéad OʼConnorʼs phenomenal rise to worldwide fame and examines how she used her voice at the height of her stardom, before her iconoclastic personality led to her exile from the pop mainstream. Focusing on O’Connor’s prophetic words and deeds from 1987 to 1993, the film presents an authoritative, richly cinematic portrait of this fearless trailblazer through a contemporary feminist lens.”
The network added, “The archive-led documentary features era-defining music videos and concert performances alongside previously unseen footage from this period. The film is underpinned by a new interview with O’Connor herself, in which she reflects on events in her own words from a present-day perspective.”
Nothing Compares premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it competed in World Cinema Documentary competition. It has gone on to notch prizes at festivals around the world, including Best Irish Documentary at Galway Film Fleadh, the audience award for Best Documentary at the Aegean Film Festival, and the audience award at Docs Ireland.
In a review, Deadline called Ferguson’s film “a full-throated battle reclamation of one of the most compelling and prophetic artists of the past few decades… Tracking larger cultural and political shifts on screen, Ferguson takes us down a hall of mirrors through the sickening abuse O’Connor suffered as a child and the despicable abuse she was subjected to as a female artist daring to speak her mind, and her truth.”