BARBARA FOREVER - PRESS QUOTES
Drawing on an artist’s deep archive of original work and forming exquisite connections between history and biography, art and life, this intimate and expansive portrait gives a pioneering figure in queer experimental filmmaking her rightful due. The Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: U.S. Documentary goes to Matt Hixon for Barbara Forever.
- Sundance Jury Citation for Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award
★★★★★
"Tenderly crafted... Editor Matt Hixon gives the film a captivating flow… Intoxicating and invigorating... "
- James Kleinmann, The Queer Review
Hammer’s voice evolves across time. Editor Matt Hixon weaves together recordings from all stages of her life, jumping from youthful exuberance to the rasp of age. In moments, time collapses: Hammer electric and exposed, then older, slower, but just as unflinching. The film is a life shimmering across the screen at once. Ambition and defiance linger in a voice grown fragile. When Hammer says she wants to exist forever, the heaviness of her wish is palpable. Time and voice layers overlap. Fragments somehow cohere into something whole, a life fully lived, marked by its end. That layering creates the film’s emotional core, not tragedy but fulfillment, sparking a reckoning with our own mortality and what we hope to leave behind.
- Courtney Gardner, The Independent
“Matt Hixon's editing work is utterly mesmerising, tracing the personal and political history over the years with a painter's eye."
-Santanu Das, Hindustan Times
“Critic’s Pick"
"A loving and intimate tribute to a queer cinema legend... A veritable goldmine of queer cinema history, and a film worthy of its peerless subject... For gay cinephiles, it's a historic gold mine... It is a work made from a position of impassioned closeness."
- Sam Bodrojan, IndieWire
“Critic’s Pick”
"An interesting, engaging movie on its own terms... Much more than a celebration of a great artist... A sharp, clever montage that moves fast and entertains throughout. It's funny and disarming and, ultimately, quietly uplifting... Demands that you watch or rewatch Hammer's deep, fascinating filmography, while excelling as its own entertaining work of art."
- Dan Mecca, The Film Stage
★★★★★
"Should be added to the canon of film, gender studies, and queer studies curricula... It's beautiful to see long-term lesbian love celebrated this way... Barbara Hammer’s legacy, and this vibrant and important record of lesbian art, isn’t just secured with this film—it’s forever enshrined. This kind of movie is even more vital now than ever."
- Mey Rude, Out
Included in the “Most anticipated films of Sundance 2026"
“The resulting archival assemblage is therefore more than just her life story, but her life story viewed in a similar fashion as she perceived it, full of loving relationships, professional slights, artistic triumphs, and great sex."
- Jacob Oller, AV Club
“The editing carefully weaves together Hammer’s films into a montage that honours both her experimental style and playful on-screen presence.”
- Martha Bird, Film Fest Report
"There is something profoundly moving about hearing a life narrated by its own art… shaping the archive into something intimate rather than reverent—alive rather than sealed in amber. It makes sense that the film won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award; the editing doesn’t just organize a life, it breathes with it."
-Rebecca Fagerholm, Cinema Femme
"Deeply poetic and layered… I would assign this film as required viewing to any class studying experimental filmmaking."
- David Leitner, Filmmaker Magazine
Included in the “Must-See Films at the Final Year in Park City”
One of "a pair of riveting documentaries."
- Jordan Raup, The Film Stage
Included in the "12 Most Anticipated Films of Sundance 2026"
"A rousing documentary that showcases Hammer’s œuvre
and lustful life in all its considerable glory."
- Chris Reed, Hammer to Nail
"Warm, elegiac, and celebratory... An illuminating portrait of the pioneering filmmaker."
- Gary M. Kramer, Gay City News
"An urgent, necessary story of queer life, feminist history, and American cinema... weaving a kinetic tapestry of archival footage guided by Hammer’s own voice, offering an intimate front-row seat into the mind of a visual poet. "
- Carla Renata, The Curvy Film Critic