All documentaries celebrating artistic geniuses face the challenge of how to recognise their talent without coming across as pure puffery. The dynamic is different in the rare event that the film-maker is personally related to the subject, as is the case in Revealed: Otto by Otto – a portrait of the great Australian actor Barry Otto directed by his daughter Gracie. She flips a potential downside – being so close to the person documented – into a virtue by crafting an emotionally rich film that truly could not have been made by anybody else. It is filled, like Otto’s performances, with light and shade.
