What do you do when you’ve meticulously planned out a documentary, only to fail to acquire the rights to the book it’s based on at the very last moment? A lot of filmmakers would throw their hands up, have nervous breakdowns and then go back to the drawing board.

When that exact scenario happened to British producer/director Charlie Shackleton, he opted instead to make a documentary about the documentary that he’s never going to make. Quite wonderfully, something about the process of breaking down his original film, scene by scene, allowed Shackleton to realize that, had it ever been made, his project would have conformed to formulas, reverted to clichés and, in some cases, actively obscured the truth for the sake of dramatic narrative. Why? Because the film was going to be yet another tr

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