The Grand Illusion

WHO CAN SEE FOREVER is part concert film, part music documentary and part meditative examination of one of independent music’s most prolific singer-songwriters, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. Initially conceived as a live document, the film evolved into a deeper study of its enigmatic subject as director Josh Sliffe spent more and more time on the road. Shot over the course of three years and using the traditional concert film as his jumping-off point, Sliffe digs into the myth and ethos of Iron & Wine through a series of interviews and unguarded behind-the-scenes footage that welcome the viewer into the center of Beam's universe.

“Slavic poet Charles Simic talks about poetry as ‘a table on which one places interesting things one has found on one’s walks: a pebble, a rusty nail, a strangely shaped root, the corner of a torn photograph.’ And it’s in this sense that Beam is, above all else, a poet: His tabletops are littered with gritty little snapshots of life well-lived, strewn with tender acoustic strums, pictures of the ocean, shaken maracas, mothers, fathers, arms.” Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork