While Poitras filmed artist Nan Goldin risking her career by challenging global art institutions to cut ties with the Sackler family — major philanthropic donors who fueled the opioid epidemic through the manufacturing of OxyContin — it was readily apparent how this moment in Goldin’s life was connected to her personal experience and history. In other words, her biography. There were seeds for how Goldin’s passion, pain, and fearlessness was fueling her latest activism in how she reacted to the HIV/AIDS crisis decades early, and it also mirrored her journey as an artist and the raw power of her photography itself. Capturing the way these threads of her life converged, with that sense of feeling in the present that was so important to Poitras, would be the central challenge of the film. How it was ultimately solved is a masterpiece of editing, and what makes All the Beauty and the Bloodshed such an incredible portrait.”