Martin Schoeller is considered one of the world’s most prominent and respected portrait photographers, known for his striking, extremely close-up images. He has photographed Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, as well as hundreds of global leaders and celebrities.

But Schoeller also documents marginalized individuals — people whom American society and the wider world often prefer to ignore, and this film focuses on that aspect of his work. It follows Schoeller’s encounters with people experiencing homelessness, death row survivors, individuals struggling with drug addiction, and the destitute. From the conversations he conducts with them, it is clear that he genuinely cares about his subjects and is committed to conveying the profound humanity of each and every one of them.

When the photographs appear on the cinema screen, the feeling is that Schoeller truly succeeds in capturing the suffering, the pain, and the realization that, through the lens, we are all more alike than we might think.