Monk in Pieces is New York filmmaker Billy Shebar’s revealing documentary portrait of composer and artist Meredith Monk, considered one of contemporary arts’ greatest innovators.

The film made its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival and will be released theatrically by Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber, on Friday, July 25 at New York’s IFC Center followed by LA’s Laemmle Royal on August 1. A wider national rollout will follow.

Meredith Monk – composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist – is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery.

As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in the mainstream press were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing” wrote Clive Barnes, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote John Rockwell. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was — and still is — the uniquely gifted one.”

Watch the official trailer for Monk in Pieces