
Enlighten Up
Kate Churchill, a yoga instructor turned filmmaker, sets out to prove that yoga can transform anyone, and picks journalist Nick Rosen, a self-described skeptic, as her test case. The film follows Rosen as he travels with Churchill to study under a string of teachers, from famous studio gurus to obscure ashram figures, trying different styles of practice on camera. Interviews with well-known yoga instructors and practitioners sit alongside footage of Rosen struggling through poses and sessions that clearly are not converting him the way Churchill expected. As the shoot continues, the friction between director and subject becomes part of the story: Churchill pushes for the breakthrough she wants to film, Rosen keeps reporting doubt instead of enlightenment, and the project starts to reveal as much about the business of contemporary yoga, its marketing, its celebrity teachers, its contradictions, as it does about any personal transformation. The camera stays on that disagreement rather than resolving it neatly.