The documentary Songwriter, starring singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran, premiered at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival.
he documentary Songwriter, starring singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran, premiered at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival. It portrays Sheeran’s creative process as part of his daily life and was directed by his cousin Murray Cummings.
Capturing almost every move of Sheeran for Songwriter must have been so natural for Cummings as hanging out with the Grammy winner is part of his life. Apart from having access to home videos of Sheeran as a teenager, Cummings was also present to record moments on the singer’s tour bus and during international travel.
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According to www.theguardian.com, the film respectfully sticks to the music. There are scenes of when Sheeran attended some kind of musicians’ boot camp in Malibu and had a jam session with his entourage of songwriters in Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, when traveling on a tour bus, Sheeran is shown producing and writing songs accompanied by writer-producer Benny Blanco. The documentary, or Sheeran himself, has been criticized for the lack of trial and tension that goes into artistic creation, for instance by variety.com, which also wrote that: “Sheeran is not the kind of mercurial or mystique-driven artist who can galvanize a truly riveting cinematic portrait.”
But maybe that’s just the way Sheeran is with his creative process. Antara News reported that the singer/songwriter in a press conference said that what he liked about the documentary was how it depicted a song written from start to finish.
He went onto say that he was glad Cummings had worked on the movie from that angle.
"Murray has created a portrait of a man obsessed by music, from his own memories and the various stages of Ed’s development. He lets us hear from the people that know Ed best," commented the Berlinale. (mut)
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