Film
Bono: Stories of Surrender
Bono sits down for an intimate, sometimes playful conversation about the experiences that made him—family trauma, fatherhood, marriage, activism, and decades fronting U2. It's less concert film than portrait, structured around his own reflections rather than chronology or career beats. For fans curious about the person behind the sunglasses, and for anyone interested in how private damage shapes public purpose.
If you liked this
Long Way Round2004
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman ride motorcycles around the world while talking openly about life, ambition, and what matters. Like Bono's film, it's intimate conversation paired with genuine stakes—physical, emotional, existential.
But It's partly a travelogue, so if you want narrative momentum rather than philosophical wandering, you'll find stretches slow.
Won't You Be My Neighbor?2018
A portrait of someone who used fame to do quiet, serious work on human dignity. Fred Rogers emerges not as saint but as intentional person—which is more interesting. The film honors that without hagiography.
But It's gentle and reverent in tone. If you're expecting scandal or contradiction, you won't find much to grab.
Cobain: Montage of Heck2015
Brett Morgen's documentary uses animation, home footage, and direct address to explore how talent, pain, and circumstance collide. It's visually inventive and genuinely moving about creativity born from struggle.
But It's dark, sometimes uncomfortable to watch, and refuses easy answers about his death or legacy.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Bono: Stories of Surrender
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Searching for Sugar Man2012
Both explore the gap between the public person and private self, and both ask what it means when your work touches people you never intended to reach. But where Bono's film is self-directed introspection, this one finds truth by looking outward—and finds something more surprising.
Two filmmakers spend years tracking down Sixto Rodriguez, a 1970s folk singer who disappeared after two failed albums, only to discover he's a legend in South Africa and had no idea. It's about obscurity, grace, and what it means to matter.
But It's a mystery, so knowing the resolution beforehand would diminish it. The film's power lives in discovery.
More like this (7)
The Two Escobars2010
Two men with the same name, opposite power, intersecting fate—one a footballer, one a cartel boss. It examines how circumstance and choice shape a life in a country at war with itself.
But It's dense and assumes some knowledge of Colombian history. The parallel structure takes patience to appreciate.
Becoming Cousteau2021
Ashraf Fahad's film traces how Jacques Cousteau became an activist through wonder. It's about the moment someone decides their fame means something, and the cost of that commitment.
But It's somewhat hagiographic. If you want serious critique of his personal life and flaws, look elsewhere.
The Toys That Made Us2017
Part music history, part cultural autopsy. Madonna's own voice matters less than the story of how reinvention, image, and provocation became her method—and how that wore on her.
But It's Netflix-paced, which means sometimes feeling a little too neatly edited. Depth gets flattened in the service of momentum.
Scratch2001
DJ Qbert and others talk about turntablism and making art from technology. It's about craft, obsession, and the meditative state that comes from mastering something small and unglamorous.
But The technical diving will bore anyone uninterested in how sound actually gets made. It can feel like watching someone explain their hobby.
Bobby Fischer Against the World2011
A genius who couldn't live with his own magnitude. The film watches him talk, rant, and justify himself—a portrait of brilliance and the loneliness it can carve.
But He's increasingly difficult to like as the film goes on. It doesn't soften that or offer easy redemption.
Masculin Féminin1966
Both use the personal—relationships, family, desire—as a lens to examine larger questions about who we are and what we owe the world. But Godard pulls the camera away and makes it abstract; Bono stays intimate. One is confessional, the other theoretical. Together they complete a picture.
Godard's fractured love story captures a young man trying to understand his identity through women, music, and political action. It's playful, sometimes infuriating, and utterly alive—performed as much as directed.
But It's genuinely difficult. The editing is deliberate chaos, dialogue seems to circle rather than advance, and the whole thing requires active patience.
The Act of Killing2012
Both are about reckoning with damage—caused, witnessed, carried. But Bono's film looks inward at personal wound; Killing looks outward at collective atrocity. One asks how you live with what you've done to yourself and those you love. The other asks the same question at a scale that shatters any easy answer.
A documentary in which the director convinces men who committed mass killings in Indonesia to dramatize their own crimes—on film, in the style of Hollywood movies they love. It's a radical exploration of how people justify violence and reshape their own memory.
But It's disturbing and long. Watching perpetrators play themselves, often proudly, is genuinely hard. The film trusts you to sit with that discomfort without resolution.
People
Cast
BonoSelf- Jacknife LeeSelf
- Kate EllisSelf
- Gemma DohertySelf
Directing
- Andrew DominikDirector
Production
- BonoExecutive Producer
- Jennifer PitcherExecutive Producer
- Kelly McNamaraExecutive Producer
- Brad PittProducer
- Dave SirulnickProducer
- Dede GardnerProducer
- Jeremy KleinerProducer
- Jon KamenProducer