Vague Visages’ Benita review contains minor spoilers. Alan Berliner and Benita Raphan’s 2025 documentary features the filmmakers and Lucy Eldridge. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

“Make Your Own Rules.” Many artistic communities and individuals use this creative concept as a rallying cry. “Why?” Many non-creative individuals often pose this question to artists when trying to understand their perspective. “Why do you wake up so early?” “Why do you want to do that? “What’s the point?” On and on it goes. To quote the English novelist Zadie Smith, creatives (in her case, writers) must “resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” The 2025 documentary Benita explores this idea via the heartbreaking yet inspiring tale of Benita Raphan, a Jewish filmmaker from New York City who took her own life in January 2021 at age 58 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Directed by the subject’s longtime friend and collaborator Alan Berliner, the movie uses words, sounds and images from Raphan’s personal archive to examine her perspective as a “very complex little mural” with “an extraordinary ability to invent life.” The timeline of Benita doesn’t provide clarity about the subject’s filmmaking career, but it does indeed reveal the personal insecurities and anxieties that fueled her work.

Berliner asks himself this question: “How well did I really know Benita as a person and filmmaker?” He, along with various interviewees, acknowledge the subject’s eccentricities and nervous energy, but they all seem baffled by her suicide. Early sequences highlight Raphan’s involvement in New York City’s punk/new wave scene during the late 70s (she dated Speedies band member Eric Hoffert as a teenager), along with her education at London’s Royal College of Art and eight-year stay in Paris, France. Again, Berliner glosses over these critical years, though he channels Raphan’s spirit as a young creative, and accentuates the fact that she was frequently fired from many jobs upon returning to America, due to her “irregular verb” personality. As the director transitions from the subject’s visual design work in the 80s and 90s to her celebrated 2002 short film 2+2, it becomes clear that Raphan felt lonely and sad about not being married and having kids. Unfortunately, the doc offers little insight about the beginning of the subject’s filmmaking career (Raphan released Within/Without in 1994 and Absence Stronger Than Presence in 1996); however, the fluid imagery incorporates footage from her work and shows why she was drawn to famous creatives whose lives mirrored her own in some way, such as the American poet Emily Dickinson, American author Helen Keller and American mathematician John Nash (the subject of Ron Howard’s 2001 film A Beautiful Mind).

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Given the ethereal nature of Raphan’s filmmaking style, she would presumably approve of Berliner’s mixed-media approach and overall flow. Once again, though, the timeline becomes confusing as the director skips forward to 2019, when the subject received a Guggenheim fellowship, allowing her to work on a short about “what’s it’s like to be a dog” — a production that eventually evolved into a study of the human experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. This section is especially heartbreaking, as Raphan’s mental health struggles intensify while dealing with the “complete magnifier of internal struggle” that spread across the world. And these sequences become even more impactful when Berliner and the subject’s friend Lucy Eldridge acknowledge that they simply didn’t know about Raphan’s suicidal thoughts and her rapid mental decline in 2020 and early 2021. Working from an abundance of archival material, Berliner does a fine job of communicating/suggesting that his subject related more to dogs than humans, presumably because her pet Rothko didn’t question her decisions and also appreciated her unconditional love.

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Benita is more of a cinematic explainer than a rich psychological study. What was Raphan’s childhood like? What were her formative experiences before bonding with fellow creatives in late 70s Manhattan? What happened in the 11 years between the short film Great Genius and Profound Stupidity and the Guggenheim fellowship? To be fair, some answers can most likely be found within Berliner’s audiovisual montages. After all, Raphan wasn’t necessarily someone who valued structure. She moved to her own beat and most definitely made her own rules. In that sense, Berliner should be applauded for mixing his long-form directorial techniques with Raphan’s free-flowing short film imagery, and for capturing her spirit as both a human and filmmaker, instead of mimicking her creative style.

Benita premiered at DOC NYC on November 14, 2025. The documentary is currently screening in New York City at Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film until December 4. Also, the Hamptons Doc Fest will honor Berliner on December 6 with the 2025 Pennebaker Career Achievement Award. 

Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film essays at Vague Visages.

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