The Disappearance of Shere Hite

It’s a fascinating and enraging film and a timely reminder of the courage of members of the feminist vanguard.

The final third of the documentary slows to a deflated sigh, however, as Newnham struggles to make it a fitting conclusion to the high-stakes drama that preceded it.

A melancholy tale about a true iconoclast.

This is a fascinating and ultimately alarming documentary, which suggests — after the overturning of Roe vs Wade — that Hite’s battles for women’s bodily autonomy are now to be fought all over again.

If this documentary doesn’t make Hite a household name among a new generation of feminists, the biopic that should really follow it certainly will.

Though its primary focus is Hite, who died in 2020, the documentary ends up making salient points about the precarity of feminist media across generations.

[There] are more high-profile women who enjoyed personal-reclamation documentaries that reframed the ruthless misogyny they suffered... Hite doesn’t have the name recognition, but she certainly deserves a sympathetic documentary like this, too.

... This refreshing documentary makes an excellent case for [Hite's] reintroduction as a sex-positive icon.

Nicole Newnham’s superb documentary charts the dramatic rise and fall of this brave woman who optimistically remarked that “equality doesn’t seem dangerous to me.”

Filmmaker Nicole Newnham strives to put Hite’s name back in the public sphere with documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite by giving an account of her fascinating life alongside the media backlash that would bury her name and reputation.