The Featherweight

Set in the mid-1960s, The Featherweight presents a gripping chapter in the true-life story of Italian-American boxer Willie Pep—the winningest fighter of all time—who, down and out in his mid-40s and with his personal life in shambles, decides to make a return to the ring, at which point a documentary camera crew enters his life. Painstakingly researched and constructed, the film is a visceral portrait of the discontents of twentieth-century American masculinity, fame and self-perception.

"It’s as nifty as its warts-and-all protagonist, with an inventive verité storytelling style inspired by John Cassavettes that also evokes the era’s filmmaking." ~ Indiewire

"Kolodny has rounded up an extraordinarily committed cast of actors, whose mannerisms and inflections are sharpened and roughened, tuned and inflected to feel like archeological rediscoveries of behaviors past." ~ New Yorker

"The film is beautifully acted all round, and a dazzling feat of stylistic play and period recreation." ~ Screen International

"There are other stories about the post-professional struggles of athletes, but the style of The Featherweight is particularly effective when it is exposed enough to show how mythmaking works — taking something true and building a fiction on top of it." ~ Moveable Fest

"As a feat of cinematic masquerade, it could hardly be pulled off with any more panache: The term “mockumentary” hardly feels appropriate for a film this reverent of its supposed form, and this toughly loving toward its human subject." ~ Variety