The ITVS-funded The Trials of Muhammad Ali will have its television premiere on Independent Lens in the coming Spring, but we’re very pleased to see it receiving a much-deserved theatrical rollout across these United States. Bill Siegel’s film covers the famed boxer’s toughest bout of all: his battle to overturn the five-year prison sentence he received for refusing U.S. military service. The “invigorating” [Hollywood Reporter] documentary explores Ali’s exile years when he was banned from boxing and found himself in the crosshairs of conflicts concerning race, religion, and wartime dissent. The Trials of Muhammad Ali premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and The Nation‘s Dave Zirin called it “the best Muhammad Ali doc I’ve ever seen and — dare I say — I’ve seen ’em all.”
You can find a list of cities in which this film is screening by going to the official site. This includes both Oakland and San Rafael, California, and all the way to Melbourne, Australia, and then onward all over the USA. Catch it in theaters, and then watch it again on PBS in May, 2014. It’s a knockout.
