Joan Didion Is Still Sharp as a Tack in the Trailer for Her New Documentary

On Wednesday, Netflix dropped a new trailer for its Joan Didion documentary, offering up a candid look at the years the author spent chronicling some of America's biggest figures, movements, and fiascos.

The trailer not only features the author speaking candidly about her success and the many stories that she covered, but offers a glimpse into her life following the family tragedy that led her to write A Year of Magical Thinking, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. We get to see what life is like for the 80-year-old author today, along with rare archival footage of Didion busy at work, hanging with her family, and partying at her home with A-listers like Spielberg and Warren Beatty.

Joan Didion: The Center Cannot Hold, which premieres this week at the New York Film Festival, comes from Didion's nephew Griffin Dunne and her grand-niece Annabelle Dunne. The duo launched a Kickstarter for the film back in 2014, racking up three times their $80,000 goal within weeks, according to Vanity Fair. The filmmakers' closeness with Didion gave them unprecedented access, leading to hours of candid interviews with the author's friends and contemporaries like Calvin Trillin, Amy Robinson, and Hilton Als, according to Vogue.

"We think she's a national treasure. There should be a story of her life out there," Griffin Dunne told Vanity Fair. "So much of her reporting is evergreen; I hate that word, but it's true. Her skepticism and clear-eyed approach to the events unfolding around her then still resonate with events unfolding around us today. Maybe even more so."

The Center Cannot Hold is the first-ever documentary on the writer, famous for transforming literary nonfiction with essay collections like Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. She's captured San Francisco in the 60s, examined the Manson murders, and penned arguably the greatest essay about New York of all time in her decades-long career. Outside of publishing more than a dozen collections of nonfiction, she's put out five novels and authored some killer screenplays.

Joan Didion: The Center Cannot Hold premieres Wednesday at the New York Film Festival, and comes to Netflix October 27. Check out the trailer above.