The Queen of Versailles is both a rip-roaring film about some outrageous characters, and a moral fable about the economic collapse of the US. Director Lauren Greenfield’s own story was determined partly by a pair of documentarians in Australia.
The BIFFDOCS $25,000 prize caught Lauren Greenfield at a truly American time. She had just flown back to Los Angeles from IDFA in Amsterdam, and plunged straight into preparations for Thanksgiving. When I rang her, she had kids buzzing round the house and was busily making pumpkin pies. That sense of her culture is important in this story.
