By Bailey Pennick
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. We decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!
When I was 14 years old, I watched a documentary on PBS by Arthur Dong called Licensed to Kill about hate crimes against gay men. I was so rattled by the film that I came out the next day because I recognized that visibility could combat violence, says Matt Wolf, the director of Pee-wee as Himself. Dong's devastating documentary premiered at the 1997 Festival, winning both the Directing Award: Documentary and the Filmmaker Trophy Documentary. Its legacy is still felt, especially by Wolf.
After that, I went to the independent movie theater alone each week and became obsessed with new queer cinema films. At the same time, I was doing activism with other gay teens in the Bay Area, he continues. During that time, I was the subject of a short documentary. I didn't like the experience, and I thought that I could have done it better, so I applied to film school and moved to New York to be like the filmmakers I most admired. I didn't like traditional film school, so I joined a video activist collective and immersed myself in the experimental film community. Soon after, I found my own creative path into the world of documentary filmmaking.
The director's path has led him to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, with his two-part documentary about the life of Paul Reubens premiering in the Episodic section. Pee-wee as Himself lets audiences inside Reubens' notoriously private world through candid and intense interviews, treasure troves of archival footage, and more.
Below, Wolf talks about the push and pull of working with a creative force, his advice for his fellow filmmakers, and what he's got stocked in his fridge.
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