In recommending Luke Lorentzen’s “A Still Small Voice” as one of the best films of Sundance 2023, I wrote, “When’s the last time a documentary made you cry? If you’re really a cinephile, you will have an answer to that question.” Well, if you watch “A Still Small Voice” when it’s released November 10 at DCTV Firehouse in New York City, at LA’s Laemmle Royal on November 17, or in the markets to follow, it will certainly be the next doc to elicit tears. Check out the first trailer below.
Serving as the kind of cinematic catharsis that we all need after enduring the past three-plus years of the COVID-19 era, “A Still Small Voice” tackles grief as its subject head-on. It follows Mati, a chaplain-in-training at New York City’s Mt. Sinai hospital, over the course of a year as she counsels patients and their bereft family members facing terminal illness. Adopting different religious practices depending on the beliefs of her patients and their loved ones, she helps the families process their emotions and, in many cases, deal with terrible loss. “A Still Small Voice” is a film about the deep importance of mourning — something that arguably the U.S. (despite 1 million Americans dead from COVID) hasn’t really collectively done for the pandemic — and how feeling sorrow is infinitely more healthy than denying it.
These are big themes wrapped in intimate, fly-on-the-wall moments that are among the most raw and emotionally significant of these subjects’ lives. That the patients who Lorentzen filmed even allowed these moments to be included is extraordinary, but it is a testament to the delicate way he captures each of these encounters. It’s no wonder “A Still Small Voice” won the Best Director prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance in January 2023, ut Lorentzen, who was previously Oscar shortlisted for his 2019 documentary “Midnight Family,” also shot, edited, and produced it himself — making it that much more personal. Oscar nominee Kellen Quinn (Garrett Bradley’s “TIME”) shared producing duties.
Viewers will feel deeply for Mati and the emotional burden that she herself bears in counseling others through their grief. Her own spiritual questioning and eventual feeling of burnout is something that also very much speaks to our time. Abramorama picked up the film for distribution (I advocated for it on IndieWire’s “Memo to Distributors” out of Sundance) — and it can be a tough watch. But it’s one of the most profound and rewarding experiences any film offers this year.
Watch the trailer below.
