The filmmakers behind Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger have explained why the documentary doesn’t show how Noel and Liam Gallagher made up ahead of their momentous 2025 reunion gigs.
The film arrived in cinemas last month and will be available to stream on Disney+ from this Friday (October 9). The digital version will include previously unseen footage, including additional performance clips and interviews with the Gallagher brothers.
Although the doc has been well-received by fans and critics alike, some viewers have questioned why it doesn’t show how the brothers buried the hatchet following their acrimonious 2009 split. Speaking during a preview event for the unseen footage at London’s Abbey Road Studios on Monday (October 5), writer/creator Steven Knight and directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace gave more insight into the making of the film.
“A lot of people having watched the film have been like, ‘Why didn’t we get to see the machinations of how they got back together?’” Southern said. “But literally, they didn’t sit down and have a heart-to-heart and go, ‘You said this, you did that’. They walked back into a room together, and we filmed it, and they started, and Oasis was back.”
Noel and Liam aren’t seen in interviews together until towards the end of the film – something the directors said was an important creative decision. “That’s something we talked about right from the beginning,” explained Southern. “We shouldn’t see them together until much later in the film. It was important to hold off on that.”
The team also reflected on how the documentary portrays the evolution of the tour and the band settling back into being Oasis. “I think it was the discomfort of especially Noel, who when he first went out there, couldn’t look at the audience because he was becoming really emotional,” said Knight. “He says it [in the film] – ‘I had to turn my back because I saw all of these reunions happening’ – and that really registered with him. I think what’s important about all this is that we’re talking about unemotional English working-class folks. These are people who are not going to [express emotion] for fun. This is happening in spite of it, and that makes it more powerful.”
Southern added: “I think the remarkable thing about the film is you see that thawing happen across the gigs. It wasn’t happening backstage, it wasn’t happening in rehearsals – it was happening live on stage every night, and Noel and Liam really got closer on stage.”
The emotion, though, wasn’t just contained to the band, with many fans and critics moved by both the shows themselves and Don’t Look Back In Anger. “People are so emotional from the beginning [of the film],” Knight said. “People are very emotional in their response to what they’re seeing. The whole point of doing the thing was to explore why this music and the poetry of the words have this effect on so many different lives, where it makes them emotional and where they feel as if the songs are about their lives. No matter how you put it together, those songs do that. It’s about the power of the music.”
Lovelace continued: “When the band announced their reunion in ’24, they probably didn’t realise quite how emotional it was going to be as a series of concerts; what it was going to feel like in those venues. In our own way, hopefully the film does that as well – you get a more emotional film than you might imagine, watching an Oasis film.”
Between performance footage and interviews with the band, the documentary also shares the stories and insights of some of the fans who attended the tour across the world. When asked by host Edith Bowman at what point they realised the fans had to be an important part of the film, Knight pointed to the initial response to the news of the reunion.
“[Oasis] were completely overwhelmed by the demand for tickets, and so it became quite obvious that it wasn’t just the original fans; it was a whole new generation – and probably two generations – of people who wanted it. So the question was: why this music, which had not been advertised or marketed for 16 years, [why] had people found it and developed such a relationship with it? So that’s why we wanted to find people around the world who had personal connections with it.”
Knight later spoke about the message that had come together in the documentary because of the feeling at the shows. “We wanted this to have a particular message at this time of division and all the bollocks that’s going on,” he said. “That in every different place in the world, with loads of different sorts of people and different backgrounds, the reaction and the effect of the songs is the same. It’s always the same with everyone. All these people are the same, and there’s a very fundamental, simple message: this is how people are, and people are the same.”
When asked why Oasis’ music and story connect with people in that way, Southern said: “I think everybody has a family, everyone has friends, everyone’s fallen out with somebody. I think there’s something universal, and I think there’s something so special about Liam and Noel as characters. They’re so charismatic. They’re so themselves that when we look at them, it’s easy to envision yourself as them.”
Bowman wrapped up the panel by asking the three filmmakers what they’d taken away from working on the documentary and how it will influence their future projects. Knight, who created Peaky Blinders and is writing the next Bond film, referenced the fact that Don’t Look Back In Anger is the first non-fiction project he has worked on. “That’s very humbling,” he said, “because it seems you can point a camera at a real person. That Welsh woman at the end, who is just brilliantly, eloquently, fantastically drunk and wonderful, and what I do for a living [as a fiction writer] is try pathetically to get somewhere close to what that is.”
Southern concluded: “Making this film brought me back to some core human values that living in London and grinding at work every day makes you forget. It’s just being kind is a good thing, forgiveness is a good thing, remembering how short life is, is a good thing.”
Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger will be available to stream on Disney+ from Friday (October 9). In a 4.5-star review of the cinematic version, NME called the film “masterfully done, with moments of irreverence and intense passion burning throughout”. It added: “The impact of the band has never been clearer than over these two hours – as Liam puts it in the final moments, ‘Oasis saves’ – as it reclaims the narrative around them and relives one of the most momentous, miraculous tours of modern times.”
NME spoke to Knight about his work on the doc last month. “The question I wanted to answer with this film was: why, after 16 years with no promotion and no marketing, is this music bigger than it’s ever been?” he said.
Southern and Lovelace also talked to NME at the time. “It’s shot for spectacle and to put you right in the middle of the crowd,” Southern told us. “If people can watch it on the biggest screen possible, as loud as the cinema is prepared to play it, then they’re going to have a good time!”
Since the release of the documentary in cinemas, Oasis have confirmed they will return to the stage next year for another series of shows across the UK, Europe and North America. Tickets for the tour completely sold out after sales were staggered across one weekend to prevent the chaos and queues seen in 2024.
Around the announcement, Liam also responded to a fan asking the band to “write some new tunes while you’re at it”. “Listen if all goes well with the tour I guess nxt step is to have a chat about new music,” he replied. “Can’t see us touring again unless we have new music does that make sense Rasta.”
