General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Voir

Voir is a 2021 American documentary series on Netflix in which film writers present personal visual essays about cinema, examining the movies and moments that shaped them. It consists of six episodes of roughly 20 minutes each and was released on December 6, 2021, with David Fincher and David Prior among its executive producers.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six visual-essay episodes, each about 20 minutes, released December 6, 2021 on Netflix¹^•²
Executive producers	David Fincher, David Prior, Ceán Chaffin, Joshua Donen, Ross M. Dinerstein, Ross Girard, Neil Kellerhouse¹
Narrators	Sasha Stone, Tony Zhou, Drew McWeeny, Taylor Ramos, Walter Chaw³
Directors	Taylor Ramos, Tony Zhou, David Prior⁴
Production companies	Campfire Studios and Netflix Studios³
Reception	100% Tomatometer from 7 critics and an 82% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes; Metascore 62; IMDb 6.8/10¹^•³^•⁵
Status	One season; the show was canceled after it⁶

Spoilers

Format and premise

Netflix describes the series as "a series of visual essays celebrating Cinema and the personal connection we each have to the stories we see on the big screen," moving from intimate personal histories to insights on character and craft.⁷ Each episode is built around one writer's argument, illustrated with clips, archival material, and in one case staged reenactments. Peter Sobczynski, a critic at RogerEbert.com, described the result as six short films in which film journalists combine artistic analysis, personal detail, and selected clips to examine both cinema's hold on the imagination and how the medium has evolved.²

The series carries a TV-MA rating in the United States, largely because the films under discussion contain violence, sexual content, and strong language that the essays show and analyze.¹^•⁸

Episodes

The six episodes cover a range of subjects and approaches:⁹

Summer of the Shark (17 min): critic Sasha Stone on the summer of 1975, Jaws, and the start of her love affair with the movies.
The Ethics of Revenge (18 min): Tony Zhou on revenge, built around Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance.
But I Don't Like Him (23 min): Drew McWeeny on likability, using Lawrence of Arabia and the monsters audiences are drawn to.
The Duality of Appeal.
Film vs Television, on how feature-film storytelling held its ground against television and how digital technology changed the balance.¹⁰
Profane and Profound, which RogerEbert.com's reviewer called the strongest of the set.¹¹

Production

The series came out of Fincher's broader Netflix relationship, which included Mank and Love, Death & Robots; Voir was released on December 6, 2021, with Fincher credited as a producer rather than director.¹² David Prior, the director of The Empty Man, served as executive producer and directed the reenactment sequences in the opening episode.¹³

Two contributors carry a particular pedigree in the form. Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou were the creators of Every Frame a Painting, a YouTube channel widely regarded as a pioneer of the cinematic video essay, and both narrate, write, and direct episodes of Voir.¹⁴^•⁴ The other essayists are working film critics: Sasha Stone, Drew McWeeny, and Walter Chaw.³

Reception

Critical response was favorable but measured. On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds a 100% Tomatometer from 7 reviews with an 82% audience score; on Metacritic it scored 62, labeled "Generally Favorable," from 5 critic reviews, against a mixed user score of 4.8.¹^•³ On IMDb it holds 6.8/10 from about 1,900 ratings.⁵

Reviewers split over the series' ambitions. Alex McLevy of The A.V. Club, grading it a B-, argued that in an era of explainer videos on every subject, the main difference in Voir was slightly better production values, though he found the best episodes genuinely incisive.¹³ Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the episodes are deliberately varied in focus, form, and quality, comparing the set to elongated versions of a Chuck Workman Oscar montage rather than a unified anthology.³ Joel Keller of Decider found the visuals dreamy and the analysis useful for aspiring critics, while noting some episodes dip into pretentiousness.³ User reviews on Metacritic were harsher, objecting that the critic-narrators' on-camera delivery did not match the quality of the writing.³

Aftermath

No second season followed: the series is listed as ended after its single six-episode season.⁶ It remains available on Netflix by subscription.⁴ The series stands as a streaming-platform experiment in bringing the video essay, a form that grew up on YouTube, into commissioned television.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Music, arts, and biographical docuseries

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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