Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Grant Gee Írland UK 2026 102 min)

The film is directed by the British filmmaker Grant Gee (b. 1964), who won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival this year. He has previously made films about Joy Division, Radiohead, and Nick Cave. The screenplay was written by Owen Martell, and forms the basis of this acclaimed new film, presented in both black-and-white and colour.

Magnus Johannesen will introduce the screening.

We are in New York City in June 1961. Jazz pianist Bill Evans, who has become one of the most talked-about names in music, has found his artistic voice and assembled the perfect trio, with his close friend Scott LaFaro on bass. Their collaboration is flourishing, and one day they succeed in recording two albums at the Village Vanguard. Both would go on to become classics and are regarded by many as among the greatest jazz recordings ever made.

A few days later, LaFaro is killed in a tragic car accident.

Evans, who has devoted his entire life to music, is devastated by grief. Unable to cope with the loss, he stops playing altogether.

Through a narrative that crosscuts between different periods of Bill Evans’s life, showing him both addicted and sober, and exploring his relationships with family members and the fiancée with whom he shares both a passion for music and a dependence on hard drugs, Everybody Digs Bill Evans offers a rare insight into the life of a celebrated yet tormented artist. Despite his extraordinary musical gifts, Evans is forced to confront the realization that sometimes silence is part of the music.

Alongside Anders Danielsen Lie, the film features Bill Pullman, Barry Ward, Laurie Metcalf, and Valene Kane.