DIRECTED BY TONY KAYE | PRODUCED BY YAN KAYE

Feature Documentary | United Kingdom, United States | 74 MINUTES | English

Twenty-three years in the making, Tony Kaye's deeply personal documentary returns to the era of American History X through his own footage: phone calls, confessions and creative rants from a singular artist navigating one of Hollywood's most legendary chapters.

For nearly three decades, the story behind American History X has existed as Hollywood legend. A visionary first-time director. A bitter battle over creative control. A studio takeover. And a filmmaker so determined to disown the finished film that he famously requested his directing credit be changed to "Humpty Dumpty."

More than two decades later, Tony Kaye finally opens the vault.

Constructed entirely from Kaye's extraordinary personal archive of home movies, phone calls, production footage, notebooks, paintings and feverish late-night recordings, Humpty Dumpty X is less a behind-the-scenes documentary than an unfiltered self-portrait of an artist at war with Hollywood. Along the way, an unexpected figure emerges: Marlon Brando, offering hard-earned advice to a filmmaker refusing to compromise, no matter the cost.

Funny, maddening, and deeply personal, this is a rare glimpse inside one of cinema's most infamous creative battles and into the mind of a filmmaker who refused to play by anyone else's rules.

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** If one Tony Kaye film isn't enough, The Trainer is also screening at SUFF, making for a fascinating double feature from one of cinema's most uncompromising provocateurs.