Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Dio: Dreamers Never Die’

Hot Docs 2022: Our Review of ‘Dio: Dreamers Never Die’

Dio: Dreamers Never Die is an honest portrait of the man, the myth and the legend that was Ronnie James Dio who quite simply worked his ass of over the course of several decades.  Not for the fame, not for the money and not even for the excesses that were so synonymous with the time; he was all about the music.

With the directing team of Don Argott and Demian Fenton at the helm who have worked on recent projects like Framing John DeLorean and Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time take us deep into the history of the man and allow us as audience members to understand the work and the drive that he had.

This isn’t your pro-typical rock doc as we see unabashedly see the man’s failures in the music business before his ultimate success.  That’s ultimately the point as we need to see the genesis of what this unique performer ultimately became and what he meant to legions of not just fans but even contemporaries in the music business.

While there is the anticipated amount of hero worship from the subjects involved it never really devolves into anything too silly as the admiration for the musical icon reigns supreme.

The archival footage is downright impressive and the film has a real flow to it as it never loses sight of trying to be entertaining in telling this story which is fitting because Dio himself in his lower moments never lost sight of his desire to be as entertaining as he possibly could be every time he hit that stage.

Dio: Dreamers Never Die is a fantastic service to the man that Ronnie James Dio was as we get a real sense of the amount of work it took for him to get to his iconic status.

  • Release Date: 4/28/2022
This post was written by
David Voigt is a Toronto based writer with a problem and a passion for the moving image and all things cinema. Having moved from production to the critical side of the aisle for well over 10 years now at outlets like Examiner.com, Criticize This, Dork Shelf (Now That Shelf), to.Night Newspaper he’s been all across his city, the country and the continent in search of all the news and reviews that are fit to print from the world of cinema.
Comments are closed.
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-61364310-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');