[D]oesn’t shy away from the diversity of the music at the festival, placing it within New Orleans’ unique history as a city that offered a home for displaced Acadians from Canada, Indigenous people and African-Americans after the end of slavery.

| Feb 15, 2023

Its strongest moments, though, are when it weaves performance with story and talking heads, with archival footage from the festival’s past, with photography and even with glimpses of mouth-watering food.

| Feb 2, 2023

...a celebration of the Festival, the city that hosts it, and more generally of good music, good food, and taking pleasure in life.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 8, 2022

An uplifting documentary that argues that people from different backgrounds can fuse and harmonize.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 19, 2022

If you can’t make it down in person, this film is a great way to enjoy the show.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 10, 2022

We belong together, after all, and Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story evangelizes the vitality of preserving culture that keep us unified.

| Sep 14, 2022

JAZZ FEST: A New Orleans Story, is bursting with genuine affection for the cultural that is the music of New Orleans. This celebratory charm of a documentary is a must see!

| Aug 4, 2022

Excellent use of archival footage to trace the history of the festival and the city it calls home

| Jul 26, 2022

It’s a melting pot of constant surprises and delights.

| Jul 22, 2022

As a cinematic work of art, Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story weaves together a comprehensive story of a city, its music, its food, its cultures, and its many changes over the past 50 years.

| Jul 8, 2022

“Jazz Fest” doesn’t just chronicle the growth of an annual series of concerts. It’s also the story of a city...an image refracted through the lives of Africans, Cajuns, Native Americans and others who make up Louisiana’s cultural gumbo.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 8, 2022

There’s much to enjoy, provided you don’t mind your tunes and grub ladled in propaganda.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 12, 2022

A noble presumption underlies this somewhat scattered and perhaps over-reaching film: The world needs a place where musical approaches mix, mingle, and inform one another.

| Jun 10, 2022

You smell and taste Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 10, 2022

Deftly summoning the myriad flavors and cultures one gets when walking the Fair Grounds during those two peerless springtime weekends, “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story” is the definitive Jazz Fest documentary we’ve been waiting for.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 9, 2022

As a broad overview of the 51-year-old music festival, the film is a vibrant, colorful 95-minute commercial for getting down to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and letting the good times roll.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 8, 2022

Not many documentaries will get the joint jumping as easily as 'Jazz Fest' manages to do with its smorgasbord of Big Easy panache.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 4, 2022

An eye opening documentary in the tradition and style of Summer of Soul.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 3, 2022

That might sound sappy or overly idealistic, but you’ll come away from Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story with a renewed belief in the power of music to bring humans together.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 3, 2022

With Jazz Fest, we get dangerously close at times to an infomercial.

| Jun 2, 2022