Sponsored by ProSisters

Alexandria Bombach, 2023, USA, 118 min.
“Fans want to know what is personal,” says Emily Saliers. And, in spite of her admitted discomfort with the personal, Saliers and Amy Ray, the iconic Indigo Girls, go there in this acclaimed documentary by filmmaker Alexandria Bombach (On Her Shoulders). Bombach gets out of her own way, melding her footage with Ray’s personal video and audio recordings from high school all the way through the 40 years of their iconic partnership. Certainly, there are coming out testimonials from men and women, many avowing that the Indigo Girls saved their lives. Bombach shares those stories and pushes it a bit by exploring the deeper impact of the duo’s experiences not only with their audience but also with each other and within their own personal journeys. They hold nothing back as they reflect on their music and their place in the zeitgeist of the 80’s and 90’s, even cringing sometimes, as many of us do when we look back 30 years at the hormone-induced angst of our younger selves. However, it is their candid revelations of their personal journeys that finally separate them as two individual people, not one melded entity. Each woman’s joys, struggles and triumphs highlight how very different these you are, yet so connected in the music they make together, still. (Sunny Hall)