Losing both Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, a mere 24 hours apart right before the year ended seemed like the cap to a particularly sad year of celebrity deaths. As a fitting way of saying goodbye, the documentary “Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds” will air this weekend on HBO, and you had better prepare your tissues for this mother-daughter love fest.
Co-directed by Alexis Bloom, the film first premiered back at the Cannes Film Festival in May, 2016. After the duo’s tragic death over the holidays, HBO Films decided to bump up the premiere of the doc. It was also one of the 44 films directed by women to be submitted for the Academy Awards for Best Documentary.
“Bright Lights” follows the lives and “intimate relationship of two actresses: Carrie Fisher, the heroine of the ‘Star Wars’ saga, and Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, who starred in ‘Singing in the Rain,” the official synopsis reads. “The big story and the small story unfold before our eyes. A tender documentary on two golden ages of American cinema.”
Though “Bright Lights” seems to focus on Fisher and Reynolds in their later years, their relationship was once tumultuous, as chronicled in Fisher’s loosely autobiographical novel “Postcards From the Edge,” which was also made into a film.
“Bright Lights” will air on HBO on Saturday, January 7 at 8 p.m.