There is a shot in Edvard Munch (one which I believe Sokurov may have watched before making his also extraordinary Faust) that made me gasp when I first saw the film: a young woman’s face, not saying anything but looking in silence and evoking a power like that of the greatest painted portraits—a moment of pause in otherwise nonstop storytelling. Peter Watkins finds this shot in his signature handheld style, as if he and his crew were following Munch, his family and friends, throughout their lives, while a stern voice explains further details of the story of the artist’s life. At any given moment within the film’s necessary three and a half hours, we are somehow right there with Munch, struggling through his creating one of the great bodies of work. As a filmmaker I have received a vast amount of courage from the radical cinema of Peter Watkins, with Munch standing as one of his most unique and strange, much like the paintings of his subject, illuminating the dark corners of humanity. – Ben Rivers