Film

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

Name: Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2012
Cast: Marina Abramović, Ulay, Klaus Biesenbach, David Balliano, Chrissie Iles

Biopic
Slow-burning

A documentary that trails Marina Abramović as she prepares her MoMA retrospective and then sits, silent and motionless, across from strangers for 736 hours straight. It's part career survey, part real-time emotional event — you watch people cry just from being looked at. Slow, intimate, occasionally very moving; not for anyone allergic to performance art or stillness.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to art that makes the artist's own nerve and endurance the subject, and you don't mind sitting with stillness long enough to feel a room change.

Skip it if you want a documentary that digs into an artist's life story, since this one stays mostly within the preparations and the people around her.

What it asks of you: Just under two hours of patient, observed footage, mostly unhurried and quiet, with the rhythm of waiting doing much of the work rather than any push toward drama.

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

If you liked this

Man on Wire2008

Philippe Petit's illegal tightrope walk between the Twin Towers is the same species of question as Marina's chair: what does a human body risk, and why, purely for the sake of the gesture?

But Heist-thriller pacing means it's flashier and less contemplative than the Abramović film.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi2011

An 85-year-old sushi master who has done the same thing daily for decades. Obsessive discipline rendered beautifully, with the same quiet reverence for repetition as art.

But Gentler and less emotionally raw — no confrontation, no crying strangers, just craft.

Grey Gardens1976

An intimate, unblinking portrait of eccentric, magnetic women that the camera simply refuses to look away from — the same fascination with a person being fully, strangely themselves.

But No art-world framing or narrative arc; it's rawer and stranger, almost uncomfortably voyeuristic.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

My Dinner with Andre1981

It strips narrative down to the same bare mechanism as the MoMA chair: two people, sustained eye contact and presence, and what that does to an audience.

Two men talk over dinner for 110 minutes, nothing else happens, and somehow it becomes riveting — a fiction film built entirely on the strange intensity of undivided attention.

But No spectacle, no visuals to speak of — if you need plot or movement, this will feel like nothing at all.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?2018

Fred Rogers built a career on the radical idea that simply being present with someone is enough. Same emotional territory as Marina's chair, delivered with warmth instead of austerity.

But Sentimental where Abramović is spare; if you want edge or discomfort, this won't give it to you.

Exit Through the Gift Shop2010

A gleeful, slippery look at the art world's appetite for spectacle and myth-making, told with more mischief than reverence — a useful counterweight to Marina's solemnity.

But Playful and possibly a hoax by design, which undercuts the sincerity you get from the Abramović doc.

Cutie and the Boxer2013

A married pair of artists, decades of shared work and private struggle — echoes Marina and Ulay's story, but lived out over a lifetime rather than a single reunion.

But Smaller scale, no museum spectacle — this is a marriage documentary first, an art documentary second.

Gerhard Richter Painting2011

Watching a great artist actually work, in real time, with all the doubt and repetition intact — a quieter cousin to watching Marina prepare her retrospective.

But Very little talking, very little drama — a patience test in its own right.

The Wolfpack2015

Brothers who invented their entire world through performance and re-enactment after years of isolation — a strange, moving study of what people do when watched or unwatched.

But Darker backstory and less art-world polish; this is about survival more than aesthetics.

Faces Places2017

Agnès Varda and JR turn strangers' faces into giant public art, chasing the same idea Marina does — that looking closely at another person is itself a kind of gift.

But Whimsical and roadtrip-shaped rather than intense; the stakes here are gentle, not confrontational.

The Truman Show1998

Same question turned inside out: what being endlessly watched does to a person, played as entertainment rather than art.

A studio comedy-drama about a man who doesn't know he's being watched every second of his life — funny, then unsettling, then genuinely moving about what surveillance does to intimacy.

But Mainstream Hollywood gloss and a satirical edge sit oddly against the sincerity of the Abramović film.