2026 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review – The Disciple
Fair warning before diving into this review: as long as it was competently made, I was going to like The Disciple, Joana Natasegara’s documentary about the rap group Wu-Tang Clan and their mysterious and infamous 2015 album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. I love the Wu-Tang Clan. Their debut album, Enter the 36 Chambers, is one of my favorite albums ever, and any time I get to learn more about the group that is comprised of members RZA, GZA, Method, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Raekwon, among others, and hear their music, I’m all for it.
That being said, The Disciple is an excellent music documentary that works for both fans of Wu-Tang and those who have never heard of the group before. This isn’t an entirely biographical documentary about the group and its members, but about one man who started as a fan of the group, became part of Wu-Tang’s large collective of affiliated artists known as the Killa Bees, and then orchestrated one of the boldest moves in music history.
The Disciple introduces us to Tarik Azzougarh, the man behind the chaos of the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album and its release. He is a Dutch-Moroccan man who became obsessed with the Wu-Tang Clan after hearing their 36 Chambers album when he was a teenager. Along with making their own low-budget martial arts films, Tarik and his friends started a rap group trying to replicate Wu-Tang. At a tour stop in Amsterdam, Tarik got the opportunity to rap for the group and crushed it to the point where they wanted to work with him. Sounds like something out of a bad movie, but this was Tarik’s life.
Working under the name Cilvaringz, Tarik was one of Wu-Tang’s Killa Bees. He performed on tour with them and became close with Wu-Tang’s brilliant leader, RZA. As Tarik’s focus turned from performing to producing, and a changing musical landscape where the value of albums and songs was diminishing year by year, Tarik pitched an idea to RZA: an album that there was only one copy and they treated it like a true piece of art, similar to the Mona Lisa, as they reference several times in the film. This bold idea was met with controversy amongst Wu-Tang, the music community, and
The Disciple isn’t a paint-by-numbers musical documentary about the Wu-Tang Clan. They don’t show us how the group formed and don’t go album by album talking about its influence and inspirations. But Natasegra does a great job of establishing how important Wu-Tang Clan is to hip hop history by showing the influence their music had on its fans and showing their legacy, like having a Wu-Tang clothing store and nail salon, and even having a district named after them in their hometown of Staten Island, New York. Fans of the group will appreciate seeing some of the history of the group, while novice and new Wu-Tang fans will learn about the essentials of the group and get a strong understanding of who they are and why they are so important to hip-hop history.
And much like Wu-Tang as a group, Natasegra uses an array of styles and techniques to tell this story. Utilizing a black and white palette with pops of color, mostly yellow, there are several talking-head interviews with Tarik, members of Wu-Tang and the Killas Bees, and even people like Shifu Shi Yan Ming, the Shaolin warrior monk who trained and is a personal friend of the RZA. They all give fascinating firsthand accounts about the events that took place and give us a full picture of the personalities of the Wu. The archival footage and photographs are cool as hell, as we see moments of Wu-Tang in the studio and performing at concerts. And, of course, the music is spectacular and will have your head bobbing as you hear classics like “Bring da Ruckus” and “C.R.E.A.M”. The Disciple is an entertaining, bass-ratting look at one of the greatest hip-hop groups of all-time and the man who helped them create one of the most controversial albums ever made.
The Disciple played in the Premieres category at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
