Disco Queen Donna Summer to Get the Doc Treatment With ‘Love to Love You’

Courtesy of HBO*

A new Donna Summer documentary, co-directed by the disco icon’s daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this month before arriving on HBO in May.

Sudano co-directed Love to Love You, Donna Summer, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams. The film will chronicle Summer’s unique career — from a star of the avant-garde art, music, and theater scene in Germany to an era-defining global superstar — while also digging into her personal life, her music-making process, and other artistic endeavors like painting. Summer died in 2012, at the age of 63, after a battle with cancer.

Love to Love You will include a trove of archival footage, including photos and never-before-seen home videos, a lot of which were shot by Summer. The film will also feature reflections and memories from Summer’s family, friends, and peers. 

Love to Love You will mark Sudano’s directorial debut; she’s primarily worked as an actress, with roles on TV shows like Cruel Summer, Taken, and Ballers. For Williams, Love to Love You is one of two films he’s premiering this year: The other, Cassandro, is a biopic of the gay Mexican wrestler Saúl Armendáriz (Gael García Bernal), who became a superstar after creating the persona of Cassandro (a.k.a. the “Liberache of Lucha Libre”). 

Cassandro, which just premiered at Sundance, marks Williams’ narrative feature debut. He’s previously garnered acclaim for his documentaries Life, Animated and The Apollo (about the iconic Harlem venue), as well as his 2010 short, Music by Prudence, which won an Academy Award.