The Disciple
Only one copy exists of hip hop royalty Wu-Tang Clan’s 2015 album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin—and that sold for $2 million at auction to an anonymous buyer later revealed to be fraudster Martin Shkreli. How that came to be is only one element of Joanna Natasegara’s captivating documentary that is essentially two films in one: the story of that notorious CD and of the man who conceptualized the idea that an album could be treated as the rarest of fine art. The first half of the film relates how Dutch-Moroccan rapper/producer Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh—a longtime Wu-Tang Clan fan—found his way into their inner circle, while the second delves into how Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and its unique circumstances came to be. Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA executive produced this wildly entertaining film that benefits from having an irrepressible narrator in Cilvaringz, who treats his own life as the stuff of legend, and the collision of art and commerce that the Shaolin affair came to represent.
Director/s
Joanna Natasegara
London-based Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara counts among films she has produced the Oscar®-winning The White Helmets (2016); BAFTA and Oscar®-nominated Virunga(2016); the Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy; The Heart of Invictus (2019) docu-series; We Dare to Dream (2023), the second film from Academy Award®-nominated director Waad al-Kateab; and Disney's Oscar®-nominated documentary short, Nǎi Nai And Wài Pó (2023). She makes her directing debut with The Disciple (2026).