At the NYFF press conference following a screening of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, photographer Nan Goldin seemed as surprised as anyone that Laura Poitras included footage of her family story, weaving together decades of her artistic risk-taking. From the time that she left her childhood home in the suburbs for a life documenting a demimonde of friends, like herself, on a cultural fringe, she has harbored the memory of her sister, a rebel who taught Nan how to rebel. That rebellion led to activism.
Poitras came on board to help complete a film project that began with some footage of Goldin and P.A.I.N. demonstrating. The group which she helped to found continues to challenge the opioid industry Nan Goldin barely survived, and now she wants to give voice to the thousands who died as a result of addiction: in particular, P.A.I.N targets the Sackler family who put their name on arts institutions in New York, Paris, London, etc., from the vast amounts of money they made through Purdue Pharma promoting drugs like oxycontin, and other pain killers they pushed as non-addictive.