The Tribeca-Winning Documentary ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat’ Gets Its Netflix Premiere Date

Arriving this December, the docu draws on untold family memories and never-shown works to find the man behind the myth.

Summary

Jean-Michel Basquiat sets out to recover the person behind one of the art world’s most mythologized names, using family recollections that have never been told

Previously unseen works and rare archival imagery form the visual backbone of the documentary

The film earned Best Editing in a Documentary Feature at the 2026 Tribeca Festival, where it held its world premiere

Jean-Michel Basquiat, the new documentary from directors Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman, premieres globally on Netflix on December 11 following an award-winning world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Rather than retracing the familiar arc of the artist’s meteoric rise, the film sets out to recover what decades of myth-making have obscured. Its goal is to strip back the legend and arrive at Jean-Michel himself.

The documentary is built on three kinds of material, and the first is the most personal. Untold memories from Basquiat’s own family sit at the center of the film, offering an inside perspective that most retellings of his life have had to do without. That family presence extends behind the camera as well, with Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux credited among the executive producers. The two are the artist’s younger sisters.

Layered against those accounts are works by Basquiat that have never been shown before, alongside rare archival imagery. Together they give the film a visual record that goes beyond the paintings audiences already know. For a figure whose output has been endlessly reproduced, the promise of unseen material is the documentary’s sharpest selling point.

Shaping that much archive into a coherent portrait is an editing challenge, and the film’s handling of it has already been recognized. At its Tribeca world premiere, Jean-Michel Basquiat took home the award for Best Editing in a Documentary Feature, a nod to how the filmmakers stitched family testimony, artwork and historical footage into a single narrative.

Wilson and Lieberman direct, and Wilson also sits on a producing team that includes Jordan Wynn, Andrew Fried, Harlin Lawal and Lana Barkin, among others. The executive producer roster is long and varied, with names such as Travis Kelce and John Janick appearing alongside the Basquiat family.

Watch the trailer above. Jean-Michel Basquiat premieres on Netflix on December 11.