Film

Maria by Callas

A portrait of Maria Callas assembled from her own voice, letters, home movies, and performances rather than talking heads. Director Tom Volf lets the opera legend speak across decades, sketching a woman caught between artistic perfection and human longing. For anyone moved by obsessive dedication to craft, or curious about the cost of genius.

TMDb rating3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love documentaries built from archive footage, letters and home movies, where a singer's own voice and private papers do the work of a narrator.

Skip it if you want a conventional biography with talking-head experts and a clear chronological march; this one is assembled more like a mosaic and leans on mood over explanation.

What it asks of you: It runs about two hours and stays with its material patiently, letting long stretches of performance and archive play out without rushing to the next point.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Touching the Void2003

Like Callas, it's an intimate account of someone pushing past human limits in pursuit of something transcendent. The film interweaves archive footage with present-day reflection, letting the subject's own voice carry the weight.

But It's a mountain-climbing survival story, not a music documentary, so the subject matter is wildly different. The pacing is deliberately slow.

Touching the Void poster

Moonlight2016

A portrait of a life built from fragments—photographs, moments, silences—that values interiority over exposition. It trusts the viewer to feel rather than understand, much as Callas does here.

But It's a fiction film about a Black man in contemporary America, so aesthetically and narratively distant. Some find its quietness frustrating.

Moonlight poster

The Act of Killing2012

Uses archival material, performance, and the subject's own narrative to examine a complex, contradictory figure. It asks what it means to look directly at someone without flinching or sentimentalizing.

But It documents mass murder and moral reckoning in Indonesia, not art or celebrity. Watching it requires real emotional stamina.

The Act of Killing poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Maria by Callas

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both explore the cost of perfectionism and the question of whether an artist can ever truly step outside their own work to see it whole.

Charlie Kaufman's film is about an artist building an impossible work—a theater piece that mirrors life so completely it becomes its own world. Like Callas, it's about someone for whom the boundary between art and self has dissolved.

But It's deliberately oblique and frustrating, with no clear plot. Its length (125 minutes) feels even longer. It's a fiction film, not a documentary, so it requires a different kind of attention.

Synecdoche, New York poster
More like this (6)

Won't You Be My Neighbor?2018

A documentary that reveres its subject without flattering them, using archive footage and private material to suggest inner life. The tone is warm but never cloying.

But Fred Rogers and opera are different worlds. Some viewers find the sentimentality heavy-handed despite the director's restraint.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? poster

Iris2014

A film essay about the photographer Iris Apfel that uses interviews, home video, and photographs to build a portrait. It's about style as a form of self-expression and resistance.

But It's brief and modest in scope—some want a deeper biographical narrative. Fashion may feel trivial beside opera.

Iris poster

Blackbird2014

A documentary about dancer Misty Copeland told through her own voice, performance footage, and reflection. It examines what it costs to excel in an art form that wasn't built for you.

But You need to care about dance. It's also shorter and lighter than Callas, which some will appreciate and others will find insufficient.

Blackbird poster

Grizzly Man2005

Werner Herzog shapes archive footage, home video, and voiceover into a portrait of obsession and self-delusion. It asks hard questions about the gap between self-image and reality.

But It's about a man who was killed by a bear, and Herzog doesn't shield you from that. The philosophical approach may feel cold.

Grizzly Man poster

Cobain: Montage of Heck2015

Uses animation, home video, and interviews to build a portrait of mental illness and artistic genius. It's visually inventive and refuses easy answers about its subject's death.

But It documents depression and suicide unflinchingly. Animation feels gimmicky to some. The subject is far removed from Callas's world.

Cobain: Montage of Heck poster

In the Mirror of the City1975

Both films treat their subjects' interiority as something that lives in texture and tone rather than exposition. Both trust silence and suggest depth through what's withheld, not revealed.

Andrei Tarkovsky's film is a collage of archive footage, poetry, and personal memory that refuses to explain itself. It's about a filmmaker's interior life told through fragments—images and sounds that resonate without narrative logic.

But It's notoriously difficult; many find it opaque and static. There's no conventional story. It's in Russian. Patience is not optional.

In the Mirror of the City poster

People

Cast

Directing

Production

Recommended by

La traviata, Hilary and Jackie