{"id":527977,"date":"2026-03-17T02:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/527977\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T02:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:41:09","slug":"noah-kahan-netflix-doc-about-depression-makes-sxsw-laugh-and-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/527977\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Kahan Netflix Doc About Depression Makes SXSW Laugh and Cry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt SXSW<\/a>, Noah Kahan<\/a> debuted a beautiful and revealing documentary about his struggles with fame, depression and body dysmorphia. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI recommend sandwiching it between a couple MrBeast videos to soften the blow,\u201d he joked after the screening. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty depressing. It\u2019s definitely not like a party piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat being said, the film \u2014 titled \u201cNoah Kahan: Out of Body<\/a>\u201d and out on Netflix on April 13 \u2014 is surprisingly funny, with the Austin audience at the Paramount Theatre laughing out loud throughout the screening. Director Nick Sweeney captured the singer-songwriter from playing tiny venues before the pandemic to writing \u201cStick Season,\u201d an ode to his home state of Vermont that made him so famous he headlined Fenway Park in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOut of Body\u201d sees Kahan opening up about his disordered eating and body dysmorphia, saying he has struggled with his body image for 15 years. He admitted after the screening that it was \u201creally difficult\u201d for him to watch the film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey asked questions that I was really scared to ask myself for a long time,\u201d Kahan said of Sweeney and the producers. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to shut these things away and to compartmentalize them. And when you have a documentary made about yourself, you have no choice but to confront those really secret fears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe hopes to destigmatize talking about mental health, and he started the nonprofit The Busyhead Project to make therapy more accessible.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was a kid, I would look up \u2018artists with antidepressants,\u2019 \u2018artists with depression,\u2019 and I\u2019d be so disappointed because I couldn\u2019t find anybody that said, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m struggling with this too,’\u201d Kahan said. \u201cSo when I would find an artist that was talking about what they were going through that I was going through at the same time, it felt like I just found religion. And my ultimate hope was that somebody watching this movie could feel like they have never heard somebody say that before, and they can start to confront that with themself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film sees Kahan traveling between cities on tour, as well as his native state of Vermont and his current home in Nashville with his wife, Brenna. Before playing Fenway Park and Madison Square Garden, the artist gets vulnerable about his fears that his career might have already peaked. After the surprise smash success of \u201cStick Season,\u201d where does Kahan go next? The film answers that question by leaving off on footage from the recording studio, with Kahan laying down vocals on the 2026 single \u201cThe Great Divide,\u201d which earned him his first No. 1 on\u00a0Billboard\u2019s\u00a0Hot Rock & Alternative Songs\u00a0chart.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd \u201cOut of Body\u201d pulls on heartstrings as it shows the Kahan family watching their own home videos and confronting family trauma. In one particularly devastating scene, Kahan sings \u201cForever\u201d backstage for a teen girl undergoing leukemia treatment. Her name, Zuza Beine, appears in the credits under \u201cIn Loving Memory Of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of the documentary, too, focuses on Kahan\u2019s family life and his relationship with his divorced parents and siblings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter we watched this documentary as a family, we all grew so much closer,\u201d he said. \u201cIt brought us together, and that first week after watching it, every conversation that we were weren\u2019t able to have before became commonplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the film, Kahan talks about having guilt for being \u201cselfish\u201d toward his parents, and he apologizes to them for airing their family\u2019s \u201cdirty laundry\u201d in his song lyrics. The documentary forced him to have difficult conversations with his family that he otherwise might not have had.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really cathartic to see that maybe I\u2019m not as bad as I think I am, and maybe I didn\u2019t do as wrong as I thought I did. That was really important to go through,\u201d Kahan said. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wish that everyone in this room could have a documentary made about their lives,\u201d he added, causing the audience to laugh. \u201cI really do. It\u2019d be a very expensive exercise, but it just brought us together.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cYou never really question how you treat each other and what your family looks like and what the context of your life means. Getting a chance to see it like this is a miracle. It\u2019s an amazing opportunity to grow closer to people that you love and that you want to understand more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf there\u2019s one thing he hopes audiences take away from \u201cOut of Body,\u201d it\u2019s this: \u201cYou might never have that conversation with your mom or dad. You might never get that chance to say sorry or I love you, or any iteration of those comments. \u2026 I hope that you guys have those hard conversations, because we don\u2019t have a lot of time here. It\u2019s really important that the people we love know how we feel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At SXSW, Noah Kahan debuted a beautiful and revealing documentary about his struggles with fame, depression and body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206,208144,237474,66422],"class_list":["post-527977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-noah-kahan","tag-noah-kahan-out-of-body","tag-sxsw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}