''Generation Wealth'' is a 2018 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Lauren Greenfield Lauren Greenfield (born 1966) is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in ma ...

. It follows Greenfield's 2017 book and photo exhibition of the same name.

Release

''Generation Wealth'' was selected to be the opening night film at the

2018 Sundance Film Festival The 2018 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 18 to January 28, 2018. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 29, 2017. Awards The following awards were presented: * U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Award: '' Th ...

in the Documentary Premiere program. The film received its European premiere at the

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

(aka Berlinale 68), where it was featured in the Panorama program. Other festivals include

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

and CPH:DOX. The film was distributed by

Amazon Studios Amazon Studios is an American television and film producer and distributor that is a subsidiary of Amazon. It specializes in developing television series and distributing and producing films. It was started in late 2010. Content is distributed th ...

and released in theaters on July 20, 2018.

Reception

On review aggregator website ''

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

'', the film holds an approval rating of 46% based on 99 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Generation Wealth'' has admirable aims, but never manages to focus long enough to put together the type of cogent argument made by director Lauren Greenfield's earlier works." 19 out of 35 reviews by top critics on ''

'' were negative. Nick Allen of ''

RogerEbert.com ''RogerEbert.com'' is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the ''Chicago Sun-Times' ...

'' wrote that the film was "a stunningly deeply resonant documentary about notions as seemingly obvious as the value of love over wealth itself." Jeannette Catsoulis of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote, "Darting from micro to macro and back again, squashing obscene consumption against child beauty pageants and ruinous debt, its structure makes for an unfocused thesis," adding that "the through line... works." Joseph Walsh of ''

Time Out Time-out, Time Out, or timeout may refer to: Time * Time-out (sport), in various sports, a break in play, called by a team * Television timeout, a break in sporting action so that a commercial break may be taken * Timeout (computing), an enginee ...

'' gave it four out of five stars, writing that the film "lays bare society’s obsession with affluence and excess with scalpel-sharp insight" and "makes for bleak and compelling viewing." Joe Morgan's ''Wall Street Journal'' review stated that the film was "all over the place, to the point of inducing numbness or suffocation." In ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', Geoffrey McNabb wrote:"... director Lauren Greenfield is a brilliant photographer but her film is all over the place." The film was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Guil ...

References

External links

Official website
* * * {{Metacritic film 2018 films 2018 documentary films Amazon MGM Studios films American documentary films Films scored by Jeff Beal 2010s English-language films 2010s American films