Love to Love You, Donna Summer

This documentary, co-directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, tells Donna Summer's life. Sudano is Summer's daughter; that closeness gives the film a wide family archive while narrowing its critical distance. At the centre of the narration are the audio tapes Summer recorded for her memoir, telling her own life in her own voice. That material lets the documentary proceed without an external narrator. The film does not skip the difficult sections: abuse in childhood, the inability to escape the disco label, the remarks attributed to her in the eighties that were said to target people with AIDS, and the reckoning that followed. That last part is its most honest; the family does not try to cover it. Who it's for: those interested in the disco era and musician documentaries. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an independent portrait; the film was made by the family and does not hide it.