21st century cinema is inundated with bio-docs and bio-pics. 

And yet, how many straddle the line between the two genres?

The Internet Age provides a seemingly endless — and relatively accessible — wealth of archival materials for bio-pics and bio-docs. Generally, the former utilize this footage near the closing-credits, giving audiences glimpses of the true figures upon which the fictional adaptation is based. Bio-docs, on the other hand, splice together this sort of footage with retroactive talking-head interviews recalling the history being relayed.

I’ve always wanted more movies to merge these two approaches; when dealing with a historical event, rely on archival materials where available . . . and then lean on fictional re-enactments — with top-shelf productional values — to fill in the gaps in the archival record.

Granted, this intertwining runs the risk of de-immersing the audience in a movie’s cohesively-constructed reality; how can we fully believe the actor is the person they’re attempting to inhabit if we keep seeing the actual person? No likeness can be totally exact.

Well, does it prove distracting in Nyad? Annette Bening plays the titular Diana Nyad, yet the movie repeatedly drops in archival materials of the real Diana, who is decidedly not Annette Bening.

And who’s responsible for envisioning this combo? Documentary directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, in their first foray into fictional(ish) filmmaking.

Fittingly, a prior example of this merging also comes from a documentarian: Errol Morris’ WORMWOOD.

As always, Neflix blurs the clear demarcations between mediums.