“All The Beauty And The Bloodshed” Releases in Japanese Theaters on March 29

Throughout her career, photographer, and activist Nan Goldin has documented the drug culture, LGBT subcultures, and post-punk/new wave scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, which were considered radical at the time. In 2023, she was named number one in ArtReview’s annual “Power 100” ranking of the most influential people in art.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an American biographical documentary film about Nan Goldin, produced, co-edited, and directed by Laura Poitras. The film premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival in 2022, winning the Golden Lion and becoming the second documentary to win the top prize.

The film focuses on the opioid crisis, which erupted in the 2000s with the rapid rise in addiction and overdose deaths caused by OxyContin, a prescription opioid painkiller marketed in the United States in 1995 by the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family. This “legal drug” has caused the deaths of more than 500,000 people in the United States over the past 20 years.

On March 10, 2018, Goldin visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with her activist group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.). There, in the Sackler Wing, an exhibition heavily funded by the owners of a pharmaceutical company, the protesters chanted, “Sacklers lie, people die!” and began throwing pill bottles labeled OxyContin.

What drove Goldin to build an advocacy organization and fight against enormous capital? All the Beauty and the Bloodshed will premiere in Japan on March 29, 2024, and will be screened in Shinjuku Piccadilly, Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho, Grand Cinema Sunshine Ikebukuro, and other venues nationwide.