‘Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger’ Directors Explain Why They Hid Cameras During the Shoot

Documentarians generally aspire to be invisible relative to their subjects — but Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s new project was so delicate that they decided to be absent from the room entirely.

For the documentary Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, the filmmakers hid a camera rig in the London studio where Liam and Noel Gallagher met for the first time in 15 years to rehearse for Oasis’ 2025 reunion tour. This rig was designed so the band “would never see a single member of the film crew,” Southern says, with footage livestreamed to a room outside the rehearsal space where Southern and Lovelace watched the famously feuding brothers reunite in real time. “I don’t think Liam even realized there were cameras there for the first week,” Southern adds.

Southern and Lovelace assembled footage from these rehearsals — and of the phenomenon of a world tour that followed and the brothers’ first joint interview in more than 20 years — for Don’t Look Back in Anger, which will premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September, followed by a theatrical release Sept. 11 (locations are still to be announced). It will hit streaming later this year internationally on Disney+ and in the United States on Disney+ and Hulu.

Southern and Lovelace — also the directors of LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut Up and Play the Hits and Meet Me in the Bathroom, adapted from Lizzy Goodman’s book of the same name about early 2000s New York indie-rock — say their latest project is about the Gallaghers’ complicated interpersonal dynamics, the tidal wave of emotions experienced by fans who went to see them live and, ultimately, the interplay between the two.

“When the lights came up at the end of the first concert in Cardiff [Wales],” Southern says, “we have a sequence where you just see people looking shell-shocked, like they’ve been through every possible emotion. Seeing that in real time [was] when we were like, ‘We knew this was going to be big, but it’s on a different level emotionally than what we’d thought.’

“Then, as the film progresses, you see the music bringing [the brothers] together,” Southern continues. “The [fan] reaction is a huge catalyst in where they end up in terms of their relationship by the end of the film.”

The crew filmed at almost all of the tour’s 41 dates across 14 countries on five continents, with Southern and Lovelace enlisting who they considered to be the best cinematographers in the world, including Haris Zambarloukos, known for Belfast and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; Lol Crawley, who won a best cinematography Academy Award for The Brutalist; and James Laxton, who received an Oscar nomination for Moonlight. “We told them, ‘You’re making your own movie, so whatever interests you in the crowd — if there’s a face or someone having a moment or there seems to be a story unfolding — shoot it,’” Southern says.

Don’t Look Back in Anger also includes music, of course, with almost every song from the setlist included either through rehearsal scenes or concert footage. After six weeks of rehearsals and shows stretching over five months, Southern says he and Lovelace had “the most material of any film we’ve ever made.” Editing down this footage was the project’s biggest challenge, with shooting for IMAX (because “we wanted this to be a big visual spectacular,” he adds) also presenting issues.

But, considering the wide speculation about how the Gallagher brothers would get along on the road, that the doc’s major challenges were technical is its own kind of triumph. Like the music, the story’s sibling dynamics create an audience touch point. “You might not be able to relate to what it’s like being in a band playing to thousands of people,” Southern says, but “we can all relate to family and relationships.”

And for tour attendees, the documentary will offer a new vantage point, allowing viewers to see the shows from the Gallaghers’ perspective as the film highlights the differences in crowds across cities. “In Argentina the energy was much different to Seoul, which was much different to Cardiff,” Southern says. “We tried capturing what it felt like at each of those places.”

Prepared for “any eventuality” before filming began, Southern and Lovelace decided on the film’s title late in the process, choosing Don’t Look Back in Anger not only because it’s the title of one of Oasis’ most famous songs but also because it reflects the story it tells. “Our hope was to make a film about reconciliation and forgiveness,” Southern says, “and I think it’s ultimately about those things — and the breakthrough moments that happened throughout.”

This story appears in the Aug. 22, 2026, issue of Billboard.