Nothing Lasts Forever | Telescope Film
Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing Lasts Forever

Critic Rating

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  • United States
  • 2022
  • · 87m

Director Jason Kohn
Genre Documentary

This fascinating documentary exposes the multi-billion dollar gemstone industry as a house of cards while examining a disruptive force in the market: synthetic, lab-grown diamonds. Featuring some of the most colorful and powerful industry insiders, the film unveils that while diamonds do come from the earth, they are only as covetable as the illusions they carry.

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What are critics saying?

100

Variety by Peter Debruge

Kohn has created the rare documentary that transforms the way we understand the world, questioning so many of our core beliefs, including the very notion of what is “real.” Through it all, diamonds won’t lose one iota of their sparkle, but you’ll never look at them the same way again.

83

The Playlist by Christian Gallichio

Often echoing a thriller — Logan Nelson’s nervy score doing a lot of the heavy lifting — Nothing Lasts Forever is both concise and wide-ranging.

83

IndieWire by Jude Dry

By turns engaging and flashy, the film probes the narratives propping up the multi-billion dollar diamond industry and posits that it’s all a house of cards. With a peppy original score, a flurry of colorful characters, and a disruptive subject matter, Nothing Lasts Forever is an invigorating study of how myths are made.

80

Screen Daily by Lee Marshall

Kohn constructs a thought-provoking film that is also an entertaining human comedy.

75

Collider by Chase Hutchinson

Both in terms of the way he lays out all the information and the craft of the filmmaking itself, Kohn shows greater patience in drawing everything out. That it teeters on the edge of the grim acknowledgment that even its truths may not be enough to change our perception of this industry and the power it holds makes it all the more enthralling to behold.

75

RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny

The film, directed by Jason Kohn (“Manda Bala” and “Love Means Zero”), turns the slogan “a diamond is forever” on its head with its title. Which is not about the durability of a diamond itself, but about the diamond market, which is being roiled by the high volume, and high quality, of synthetic diamonds.

70

Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray

Kohn’s talking heads are remarkably animated and, collectively, the interviews present a provocative debate about the meaning of “valuable.”

70

The Hollywood Reporter by Daniel Fienberg

A neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.

70

Slashfilm by Chris Evangelista

From a filmmaking standpoint alone, "Nothing Lasts Forever" is one of the more memorable recent documentaries. But it helps that the narrative being told is so fascinating, scooping us up into this globe-trotting world where money talks and everyone — and every diamond — has a story, true or otherwise.

70

The New York Times by Natalia Winkelman

That marketing campaigns are built on fallacies isn’t exactly revelatory, but in pairing his excavation of the diamond myth with new inquiries into how the industry is evolving (and how it’s stagnating), Kohn strikes on something valuable.

70

The Hollywood Reporter by Dan Fienberg

A neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.