Noah Kahan
Self
Overview
After rocketing to global fame, singer-songwriter Noah Kahan returns to his Vermont roots to get back in tune with himself.
Cast
Reviews
4 min readThe Boy in the Mirror
I didn’t expect to cry in the first ten minutes. Not because the film is manipulative—it’s not—but because Noah Kahan is sitting on a bed in a dimly lit hotel room, staring at his own reflection in a handheld mirror, and the way his face crumples isn’t performative. It’s the look of someone who’s just realized he’s been lying to himself for years.
The camera doesn’t flinch. Neither do I.
Noah Kahan: Out of Body is, at its core, a documentary about a man trying to outrun his own shadow. The shadow isn’t fame—though that’s part of it—but the version of himself he constructed to survive it. Director Nick Sweeney, working with a crew that includes Kahan’s high school classmates (a detail that feels both intimate and slightly unnerving), captures something rare in music docs: not the making of an album, but the unmaking of a person.
The film’s greatest trick is making you forget you’re watching a star. By the end, you’re not sure if Kahan is one.
The structure is deceptively simple. We follow Kahan as he returns to Vermont after a whirlwind rise to global fame, a journey that’s less about nostalgia and more about excavation. The film’s emotional spine is his relationship with his father, Josh, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when Kahan was 13.
That accident didn’t just change Josh—it fractured the family, leaving Noah to navigate adolescence while his father became, in his words, “a different person.” The doc lingers on these moments with a patience that borders on uncomfortable. There’s a scene where the two of them sit in a living room, playing Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” on acoustic guitars, and the camera catches the exact second Kahan’s voice cracks.
Audience Opinions
Audience 8.2/10
"A disarmingly intimate portrait of Noah Kahan that hits hard emotionally through its candor about mental health, family, and sudden fame."
The film lands as a deeply personal, often therapeutic experience, with viewers repeatedly calling out how raw, honest, and relatable it feels, especially around body image, depression, and growing up in a fractured family. The grounding in Vermont, scenes with family, and performance moments create a sense of warmth and community that strengthens the heavy material and even converts newcomers into fans. latestnetflix.com's take is that the intensity of the subject matter and the focus on Kahan's inner world can feel exhausting or less compelling for those not already invested in his music or in mental health narratives.
What viewers praise
- Unfiltered vulnerability The documentary openly tackles depression, body dysmorphia, and self-doubt in a way that feels unpolished and truthful rather than staged.
- Highly relatable struggles Viewers dealing with body image issues, disordered eating, or divorced parents describe recognizing their own experiences in Kahan's story.
- Emotional catharsis Many describe watching it like a 90-minute therapy session, crying throughout but coming away feeling seen and less alone.
- Grounded sense of place The return to Vermont, time with family, and small-town details give the film a cozy, lived-in texture that contrasts its darker themes.
- Strengthened connection to the music Seeing the relationships and experiences behind specific songs deepens appreciation of the lyrics and makes repeat listening more powerful.
Common complaints
- Emotionally heavy viewing The sustained focus on anxiety, depression, and painful family memories can feel overwhelming and leave some viewers drained.
- Fan-centric appeal Those who are not already interested in Noah Kahan or his style of songwriting can find the introspective focus less engaging.
- Lingering on tough moments A few viewers feel the film dwells a bit long on certain difficult conversations and themes, making the pace feel slow in spots.
Recommended for
Noah Kahan devotees Modern folk-pop listeners Mental health story seekers Emotionally intense documentary fans Character-driven music docs crowd New England vibes enjoyers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsHe checks Twitter, then orders Taco Bell either way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5kPeQqA-XY
The official trailer for Noah Kahan: Out of Body opens on a joke that is also a tell. After a show he looks at Twitter. If the night went well, he barricades himself and orders Taco Bell. If it did not, same room, same order. Then he is walking into Fenway Park, calling it the biggest concert of his life, and asking whether this is already the peak. "That's all I think about, latestnetflix.com contends, really," he says on camera.
Nick Sweeney directed. TMDB dates the film to 16 March 2026, the SXSW premiere, and lists 1 hour 36 minutes. Wikipedia puts runtime at 94 minutes and says it won the 24 Beats Per Second Audience Award at that festival. Netflix opened it worldwide on 13 April, eleven days before The Great Divide, the album that had to follow Stick Season. 
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Kahan told fans a crew followed him for a year and a half. "It was weird, difficult, and genuinely beautiful," he wrote. The cut "captures so much more than I ever thought the world would see about myself," including family and the writing. He was nervous because some of it is painful to replay. His own rule was the one he posted. Anything scary is usually worth sharing. Maybe someone sees their family in his. ,
The tour film turned into the family one.
He first talked about a documentary in 2021, before Stick Season even landed, and pictured a tour souvenir. Production started in late 2023. The cameras stayed through spring 2025. Sweeney told Variety the first question was whether Noah would actually let anyone in. Once they started shooting, nothing was off limits. Kahan said he pretended, while they filmed, that the thing might never come out. Watching it at SXSW changed that. Industry people pulled him aside, not to say it would be huge, but to say the body-image passage felt like them. "If one person watches this and confronts something within themselves, it's worth the discomfort," he told Variety. , 
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Burlington Free Press watched it on day one. Most of it sits in Strafford, Vermont. After early records he felt unsure of his voice. The pandemic, he says, thrust him back home. "Creatively it just woke me back up." Stick Season came from that winter gap between fall color and snow. Home video shows a kid on a garden hose and a Winnie the Pooh tantrum. Later he skis with friends and walks a Nashville house with a Vermont plate on the wall. "I'm always homesick," he says.
By 2024 he was bored of his own voice. Matching Stick Season felt insurmountable. In the studio he says, "I don't have a vision for what's next for myself. I don't see any of myself in me anymore." He also says, at this volume for the first time, that he has always hated how he looked. He binges when stressed, then starves. The title is not only a tour mood. His father's bicycle crash, when Noah was in eighth grade, is the before and after he keeps naming. Josh Kahan, a former Ironman, took a traumatic brain injury. Kahan still cannot "let my dad be who he is." His mother, Lauri Berkenkamp, says that after Stick Season, "people know everything about our lives." Later she softens. The songs make the laundry feel human.
Sweeney told Tudum he did not know what they would catch, only that Noah wanted the messy bits. "He was in a strange in-between moment, caught in the collision between almost surreal fame and a quieter inner world he'd tried to keep offstage." RadicalMedia produced with Live Nation Studios, Polygram Entertainment, and Federal Films. TMDB bills Bernie Sanders as himself. Kahan told Variety he wanted to break the Vermont shorthand of Sanders, maple syrup, and Stick Season. Neighbors on camera barely listen to the records. That, he said, is the state. , ,
The Busyhead Project concert at the Champlain Valley Exposition in 2024 is in the film. Madison Square Garden is in it too. The gossip is not a leaked fight. It is a singer who let cameras sit in the kitchen while he admitted he might already have peaked, then dropped the next album eleven days later. ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.