SXSW 2022: Nothing Lasts Forever, The Pez Outlaw, The Thief Collector | Festivals & Awards

Directed by Jason Kohn, the doc goes into the history of the earth-grown diamond business, while showing the new enterprise that makes exact copies—synthetic diamonds, grown in labs. It’s nearly impossible to tell them apart, and yet if synthetic diamonds (which are much cheaper) were to become all the more popular, it would force the regular diamond industry to change their focus. They’d have to tell a different story. 

“Nothing Lasts Forever” is full of juicy information, delivered by its experts like jeweler Aja Raden, who continually debunks the business with a giant grin on her face, walking us through a story that’s “a lie inside a lie inside a lie inside a lie.” It’s a global scam, one that the industry has flourished from for years, and one that Kohn takes apart piece by piece with excellent journalism. Kohn allows a lot of the interviewers to speak for themselves, like diamond expert Martin Rapaport, whose concept about the diamond’s value always goes back to personal. If you make the diamond cheap, then the engagement will feel cheap. 

Meanwhile, there’s an underdog gemologist named Dusan Simic, who labors in solitude to create an entirely undistinguishable diamond. Kohn’s editing does a great job in showing the future that the diamond industry clings too, along with the notion that they are special. “Nothing Lasts Forever” shows how one fantasy is no match for the truth, so long as the viewer is ready to stomach it. The film comes to Showtime later this year, and I hope it becomes the diamond industry menace that it deserves to be. 

Another unforgettable David vs. Goliath story can be found in “The Pez Outlaw,” a documentary that immerses you in the serious drama of a subculture that on the outside only seems funny. Its name comes from the nickname for Michigander Steve Glew, a legendary Pez collector who realized the money that could be made from selling Pez dispensers made and sold only in Europe to different American collectors. “I’ve been wanting to tell this story for 20 years” says Glew, as he unravels an amazing adventure that had him smuggle new PEZ dispensers by the thousands, and become the scourge of Pez America, including President Scott McWhinnie. By giving serious attention to Glew’s story and the scandals he caused in the PEZ scene, the movie establishes its own rich, thematic world-building.