Director Ron Mann promised to put the "fun" in fungus... and he certainly delivered. Know Your Mushrooms is a highly entertaining and energetic documentary about the wide world of fungi and the people who celebrate it.
The film opens in Colorado during the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival and its four days of fungi-related activities: wild-mushroom hunting, education, cooking, medicinal properties, etc.
This may sound dry, but I assure you the film is bursting with life (as anyone familiar with Mann's previous documentaries would hardly be surprised at). The characters we are introduced to all share a common passion for fungi, some teetering over into outright mushroom-worship: proposing theories of alien fungi seeding the evolution of man and interpretations of the new testament as "mushroom mythology" in which Jesus and his apostles were actually (you guessed it) mushrooms. However, the film is also extremely informative, featuring (among others) mushroom expert extraordinaire, Larry Evans, as he treks through the fungi-filled forests of Colorado, Alaska, and Bolivia.
Know Your Mushrooms is playful, well paced, and augmented with spectacular animation, and I highly recommend it.
(By the by, while introducing his film at the Ritz, Ron Mann revealed that he has long shared his interest in fungi with fellow filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch... who knew?)
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