| Kate Plays Christine | |
| Director: | Robert Greene |
| Producer: | Susan Bedusa |
| Starring: | Kate Lyn Sheil |
| Music: | Keegan DeWitt |
| Cinematography: | Sean Price Williams |
| Editing: | Robert Greene |
| Distributor: | Grasshopper Film |
| Runtime: | 112 minutes[1] |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $25,564[2] |
Kate Plays Christine is a 2016 American documentary film written and directed by Robert Greene. It follows actress Kate Lyn Sheil's preparation for the role of Christine Chubbuck, a newscaster who committed suicide on live television in 1974, for a fictitious film. It is one of the two films about Chubbuck that premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, the other being Christine.[3]
The film premiered on January 24, 2016, at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition section,[4] where it won the Special Jury Award for Writing.[5] It was also selected to screen at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016.[6] Grasshopper Film acquired the US distribution rights to the film in April 2016.[7] The film was released in one theater on August 26, 2016.[2]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 55 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Kate Plays Christine blurs genres—and the line between fact and reality—with a cleverly provocative docudrama look at newscaster Christine Chubbuck's life and death."[8] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 75 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9]