This documentary about the famed neurologist and author is one of the loveliest and most thought-provoking films of 2021.
Yet one of the indelible lessons of Ric Burns’s remarkable new documentary, shot in the final months of Sacks’s life, was just how tempestuous his inner life had been. He let slip some of his secrets in his autobiography, On the Move, which was published soon after his death, but Burns’s film, full of humour and pathos, provides further insights.
Take your pick of extraordinary moments in this excellent documentary about the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. In 2015, aged 82, knowing he had months to live, Sacks sat down at home in New York and talked to the camera with great honesty.
It’s well worth tracking down one of the September 29 special cinema screenings of Ric Burns' lovingly made documentary portrait of the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or seeking it out online.
When we first meet Sacks in Burns’s film, we find a charismatic man full of life, warmth and humour. He does not seem like a man facing a devastating diagnosis. However, time is running out and you sense that Sacks still has a lot more to say.
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is in UK & Irish cinemas for a One Night Only special event on 29 September.

Discover the Unique Personalities of Bees in Nature’s Season 40 Premiere, My Garden of a Thousand Bees, Wednesday, October 20 at 8/7c on PBS
Taking refuge from the coronavirus pandemic, wildlife filmmaker Martin Dohrn set out to record all the bees he could find in his tiny urban garden in Bristol, England, filming them with one-of-a kind lenses he forged on his kitchen table. See his surprising discoveries in Nature: My Garden of a Thousand Bees, premiering nationwide Wednesday, October 20 at 8 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/nature and the PBS Video app.