''Kate Plays Christine'' is a 2016 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

written and directed by Robert Greene. It follows actress

Kate Lyn Sheil Kate Lyn Sheil (born June 13, 1985) is an American actress. She is primarily known for her roles in independent films ''You're Next'', ''V/H/S'', '' The Color Wheel'', '' The Sacrament'', and the award-winning Netflix series ''House of Cards''. ...

's preparation for the role of

Christine Chubbuck Christine "Chris" Chubbuck (August 24, 1944 – July 15, 1974) was an American television news reporter who worked for stations WTOG and WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida. She was the first person to die by suicide on a live television broadcast ...

, a newscaster who committed suicide on live television in 1974, for a fictitious film. It is one of the two films about Chubbuck that premiered at the

2016 Sundance Film Festival The 2016 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 21 to January 31, 2016. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 2, 2015. The opening night film was ''Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You'', directed by Heidi Ew ...

, the other being ''

Christine Christine may refer to: People * Christine (name), a female given name Film * ''Christine'' (1958 film), based on Schnitzler's play ''Liebelei'' * ''Christine'' (1983 film), based on King's novel of the same name * ''Christine'' (1987 fil ...

''.

Release

The film premiered on January 24, 2016, at the

in the U.S. Documentary Competition section, where it won the Special Jury Award for Writing. It was also selected to screen at the

66th Berlin International Film Festival The 66th Berlin International Film Festival was held from 11 to 21 February 2016, with American actress Meryl Streep as the President of the Jury. The Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement was presented to German cinematographer Michael ...

in February 2016. Grasshopper Film acquired the US distribution rights to the film in April 2016. The film was released in one theater on August 26, 2016.

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Kate Plays Christine'' blurs genres—and the line between fact and reality—with a cleverly provocative docudrama look at newscaster Christine Chubbuck's life and death." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a score 75 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 5278592, Kate Plays Christine 2016 documentary films American documentary films Films about journalists Films about suicide Documentary films about television Documentary films about journalism Documentary films about suicide Films scored by Keegan DeWitt 2010s English-language films 2010s American films