Review: McQueen film premiers at Tribeca Film Festival

“We didn’t want to make a fashion film, we wanted to make a film about an extraordinary man who happened to work in fashion,” says Ian Bonhôte, who together with co-director Peter Ettedgui, unveils the highly anticipated McQueen documentary at Tribeca Film Festival this week. His words are fitting because McQueen’s discomfort within the fashion industry is well-documented, and writ large from his early on-screen moments when, still only 22, a self-described “East End yob” he turns his back to the camera during interviews so that he wouldn’t be identified and endanger his unemployment benefit which he used to buy fabrics.