Julia’s Stepping Stones Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Netflix have a number of short documentary films on their channel, and Julia’s Stepping Stones is the latest biographical piece to release. This one looks at the upbringing of documentarian Julia Reichert. Growing up, she always felt like she didn’t fit in, and this film does a good job of showing how she finds her place in the world – and what drives her to do what she does.
The story begins in Summer 2099, right in the heart of Jersey Shore. Julia grew up with her brothers and very much felt comfortable as a tomboy. She hated dresses too, along with the limited worldview of women at the time, eventually feeding into her becoming a feminist. Seeing how the pieces of her life have been shaped by her own experiences is a nice touch, and definitely helps to give some context around how she got into filming documentaries.
Shot with archival footage and photos strung together, some of the editing is a bit choppy here. However, one stand out moment stems from a photo of Julia with her grandchildren, walking across stepping stones in the forest. This is, as Julia herself attests to, symbolic of her “stepping stones of life”. This helps to paint a picture of how she sees herself within the world, and the entire story is framed around this idea.
There are social issues discussed too, specifically that coming from the civil war, equality and various ideas for society moving forward. Specifically, how capitalism “isn’t the only way to go”, while also showing pictures of Karl Marx, Chairman Mao and other leaders. This film certainly isn’t as subtle as it thinks it is about the messaging!
However, this all lends itself nicely into Julia becoming one of the founders for the Women’s Liberation Movement, which is an empowering look at how women began to work for equality and big changes. This stepping stone then eventually moves into the creation of New Day Films.
Now, Julia does mention how this company is a “large, filmmaker owned cooperative distributor” but compared to big studios and other indie studios… it’s not. The company consists of over 100 filmmaker members and a management team yes, but it’s hardly the juggernaut when compared to other independent studios like A24.
However, the better part of this one actually stems from how Julia herself got into cutting and creating her movies. Understanding how she came to learn the art of filmmaking, and hone that into working on topics that interest her, is one of the better parts of this documentary. Everything here eventually leadS to a little montage at the end showing all the films Julia has worked on.
The thing is, Julia’s Stepping Stones ends so abruptly at this point that it’ll likely leave you a bit disappointed. This would have benefited tremendously from another 30 minutes or so, discussing how Julia got into filming documentaries like American Factory, and whether her worldview has changed at all after working on all these different movies.
It’s certainly not a bad documentary, but it’s also disappointingly lacking too, which is a shame because there is some good stuff here.
