Sundance review: 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore' gives the Oscar winner her props, with a director who's viewpoint gets into issues other people might have missed

One might expect the documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” to be a straight-forward profile of the Oscar-winnng actress – the first deaf person to win an Academy Award for acting — because it has the PBS logo at the beginning. (It’s part of the “American Masters” series, though an air date has not been set.)

But because director Shoshannah Stern is, like the movie’s subject, both an actor and deaf, this thoughtful and absorbing movie reaches into territory other filmmakers — especially ones who can hear — wouldn’t think to cover.

Stern starts at the Oscars — not in 1987, when she won for her first movie, “Children of a Lesser God,” but in 2022, when she starred in “CODA,” which won Best Picture and an supporting-actor Oscar for Troy Katsur (who was the second deaf actor to win an Academy Award). But Stern does go back to that 1987 win, when Matlin was 19, to show how that win catapulted Matlin not only into instant fame but also a spokesperson for America’s Deaf community. Matlin today says it’s a role for which she was unprepared.

An example of this came the next year, when Matlin followed Academy tradition and presented the Best Actor award. She signed her intro, then spoke the names of the nominees and the winner (Michael Douglas for “Wall Street”). In so doing, she quickly learned, she incurred the wrath of the Deaf community, who debated whether her speaking was selling out to the hearing majority.

Matlin’s entire career, Stern’s movie shows, happened without a road map, because no other performer had faced the obstacles she did. That included an abusive relationship with Willam Hurt, her “Children of a Lesser God” co-star, who was 16 years older than her — and, the movie points out, never paid a price for what most of Hollywood knew was abhorrent behavior.

The documentary is dotted with bits of history and information that the hearing community would never think about. For example, when Stern interviews deaf actor Lauren Ridloff they compare notes about the fact that Stern, too, took her tun playing the Sarah role in “Children of a Lesser God” — the one that Matlin played in the movie, and that Ridloff earned a Tony for in the 2018 Broadway revival.

Stern’s attention to the Deaf people she interviews carries into the camerawork — because she frames the subjects so that their sign language is visible, without being cropped out. And the movie is shown with subtitles, which is helpful for both deaf and hearing viewers, since one group can’t hear the people speaking and the other likely doesn’t know the sign language.

None of this detracts from what’s the central thesis of Stern’s documentary: Namely, that Marlee Matlin is an incredible human being with a complicated and fascinating history — and Stern is determined to give Matlin all her flowers.

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‘Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Friday, January 24, 12:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Saturday, January 25, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 29, Library, Park City; Thursday, January 30, 9:40 a.m., Redstone 2, Park City.  Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and descriptions of sexual and physical abuse. Running time: 97 minutes.