Sitges 2025: Fascinating ‘Starman’ Documentary on NASA’s Gentry Lee
by Alex Billington
October 20, 2025
If you’re a space geek like me, who loves staring up at the stars 🌟 and wondering what’s out there, there’s always a lingering set of existential questions that will remain unanswered for a long time: “Are we alone in the universe? If there are trillions of planets where intelligent life could have evolved, then why have we not definitively seen or heard from anyone (yet)?” And what would life be like if you dedicated it entirely to this never-ending search for extraterrestrial life existing somewhere out there? This documentary does answer that question at least. Starman is a biopic doc from filmmaker Robert Stone (of Earth Days, Pandora’s Promise). Not to be confused with the 80s sci-fi classic also titled Starman starring Jeff Bridges as an alien – though I’m pretty sure any reference to this movie is on purpose. It’s also a reference to the classic David Bowie “Starman” song from 1972. Now we get a documentary version of “Starman” and it is indeed about a star man known as Gentry Lee – who spent his entire life working at NASA attempting to actually answer these questions about life elsewhere in the universe and how to find it – or at least find some evidence of it.
Directed by Robert Stone, and produced by Larry Franco, Starman is a documentary feature film profiling the life of Bert Gentry Lee – better known as Gentry Lee by his friends & colleagues. It premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival and I caught up with it at the Sitges Film Festival; though it’s not really science fiction – it’s all science non-fiction. I must admit I was not familiar with Gentry Lee before watching this but now I’m a huge fan. Most of all I just want to hang out with him and geek out about space, sci-fi, NASA, and everything else. One of the craziest parts of his story is that, just as his career at NASA was winding down, legendary sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke asked him to co-write a few books with him. Together they wrote the Rendezvous with Rama sequels & a few others. However, the doc still focuses on the bigger question on his mind. “Legendary NASA robotics engineer and best-selling science fiction author, Gentry Lee, has spent a lifetime seeking an answer to the ultimate cosmic question: Are we alone in the universe?” Well, there’s no definitive answer, though he does posit the possibility that the answer is no (meaning yes there are others) – we’re just unlikely to ever encounter them. You’ll have to watch the doc to find out the rest of his thoughts.
This is a seriously fascinating documentary to discover, I quite enjoyed it. It’s not really about the search for extraterrestrial life, it’s more of a biopic about this guy and his life and all that he achieved. He really, truly is one of the luckiest people alive who has lived such an astonishing life. It’s a portrait of someone who was blown away by and deeply inspired by the fervor for space exploration that thrived during the Apollo era – the 1969 Moon landing, the Mariner missions, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, of course. He worked at NASA doing what most people dream of – figuring out real ways to actually find proof of life and visit other planets. He was friends with Carl Sagan and so many other genius minds of that era. I was inspired by his story but above all I just really love listening to super smart, super geeky people chatting about anything and everything. It provides this warm blanket of comfort & relief for me, like ahhh here’s another dude just like me, saying the same kooky, smart, crazy cool stuff that most people can’t stand, but here he is geeking out about it. And nerding out on these remarkable accomplishments and riffing on what humanity can do when it isn’t caught up in all this stupid shit down on Earth. Yeah man, I’m glad there’s a couple of us out there…
As is usual with most documentaries, if the viewer isn’t into the topic and isn’t intrigued by whatever he or she is talking about, they probably won’t enjoy watching the film. The filmmaking in this doc isn’t especially exciting or special – most of it is talking heads with archival footage, discussions, explanations, geek outs, and so on. But it kept my attention & entertained me nonetheless. The most interesting aspects are choices made to visualize certain concepts that Gentry Lee discusses, including using a set of light bulbs laid out in a big, empty warehouse to depict the concept of life existing elsewhere for a brief amount of time. The film is just the right length at around 85 minutes, but of course I would’ve happily listened to Gentry Lee go even deeper into theories, ideas, differently possibilities, stories about Sagan or NASA, and so on. Whether or not it was asked during the doc interview or just cut out in the final version, I’m not sure – but they don’t ever get into the recent interstellar object phenomena like the cylindrical ‘Oumuamua discovered in 2017 (that is eerily reminiscent of the spaceship in the Rendezvous with Rama books). Most importantly, I was moved by what he brings up at the end of the film and his final message to us all – let’s focus on saving this world first.
Alex’s Sitges 2025 Rating: 8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
 |
