Come See Me in the Good Light should have won the Oscar

Come See Me in the Good Light documentary on Apple TV+ is a stunning, life-affirming portrait of poet Andrea Gibson. Stream it now.

I can’t say it is a better film than the others. All of the nominated films in the Documentary Feature category were amazing. Full transparency: I didn’t see the winning film because I am overdosed on Putin (how that happened is a whole other article).

I believe this film should have won for its style and fearless editing. And the main reason I wanted to see it win was so more people knew it existed. This documentary about poet Andrea Gibson’s life and death is an urgent must-watch for everyone who wants to live. More importantly, for anyone who will die.

Ryan White (Pamela: A Love Story,The Keepers) was able to make fixing a mailbox cinematic. What he did with Gibson’s diagnosis and the weight of watching cancer markers and this marriage weathering “in sickness” with so much grace is barely short of miraculous. It’s a masterclass in living.

Andrea Gibson — Colorado’s Poet Laureate, spoken word icon, queer hero — was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021 and died on July 14, 2025, at 49, six months after the film’s premiere at Sundance. 

In the film and in life, Andrea Gibson lived for her passion and her art in an almost supernatural way. Her body obeyed her commitment to her writing and her fans. 

Tig Notaro first met Gibson at a show in Boulder roughly 25 years ago, and they built a strong mutual admiration for each other as artists and as survivors. When White and Notaro agreed to do a funny documentary together, he did not expect her to pitch a queer poet’s terminal cancer journey. But that’s Notaro’s gift, finding the laughter in grief, in panic, in death. She’s faced her own cancer diagnosis, which means she wasn’t producing this film from a safe distance. She was standing in its vortex as she oversaw the creation of this amazing film. She called those final shows at Denver’s Paramount, where Gibson rallied to perform twice despite everything, ” I tell everyone, it truly felt like the Beatles reunited, it was so palpable, the energy in that room.” And all the intimate moments in this film culminate in that packed theater and that energy.

And yet this is not a death film. It’s not even quite accurate to call it a life film. It’s a love film. It’s about each moment in our bodies being so truly magical that we cannot help, when we see it clearly, we cannot help but be in love with life. Gibson and their wife, poet Megan Falley, are so radically, eloquently, beautifully present that watching them feels like trespassing on something sacred. They lie on the floor with their dogs. They fight. They laugh. They reckon with a body that’s betraying them, and they do it with a ferocity and tenderness that made my chest feel torn open in joy AND grief.

White’s film never loses sight of the warmth, humor, and love that defined Gibson’s marriage and poetry. And he accomplishes this by making every single shot as joyously full of love and light as the people he follows.

The film won the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance and earned a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. And still, the Academy handed the trophy elsewhere.

That’s their loss. But it’s our loss, too, because we, as a nation, as a planet are so desperately in need of honest joy, everyone would be giving a gift to the world by shouting about this movie from every rooftop…or red carpet.

Come See Me in the Good Light is streaming on Apple TV+. Watch it. Then watch it again with someone you love and say the things you’ve been saving for later.

There is no later. 

Say it now.