Revealed: Otto by Otto review – nuanced portrait of a

Gracie Otto’s documentary about her father – the legendary actor Barry Otto – blooms into a melancholy portrait of artistry and its burdens

All documentaries celebrating artistic geniuses face the challenge of how to recognise their talent without coming across as pure puffery. The dynamic is different in the rare event that the film-maker is personally related to the subject, as is the case in Revealed: Otto by Otto – a portrait of the great Australian actor Barry Otto directed by his daughter Gracie. She flips a potential downside – being so close to the person documented – into a virtue by crafting an emotionally rich film that truly could not have been made by anybody else. It is filled, like Otto’s performances, with light and shade.

Otto by Otto (which premiered at this year’s Sydney film festival and arrives on Stan on 16 June) begins unassumingly, with grainy home videos and footage of the now-retired actor hanging out with his cats in his cluttered Petersham home among books, paintings and curios. Gracie takes her father to Brisbane to retrace and discuss aspects of his childhood, growing up in a poor home, eating tripe obtained by his abattoir worker father. This leads into his early stage career, relocation to Sydney and his cinematic work, starring or co-starring in several classic Australian films including Bliss, Strictly Ballroom and Cosi.