‘Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger’ review: Sentimental doc about UK band’s reunion plays best when it focuses on the music

Dirs: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace. UK. 2026. 123mins

UK band Oasis always did things supersized, delivering stadium-ready anthems when they weren’t threatening to implode due to Noel and Liam Gallagher’s titanic rows. So it’s no surprise that a documentary about the band’s smash 2025 reunion tour would be equally gargantuan, treating both the brothers’ mending of fences and the band’s enduring music as seismic events. Melding concert footage with sometimes belaboured testimonials on Oasis’s greatness, Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger is immodest in its insistence on making viewers cry, laugh and sing along. But, ultimately, this uneven but frequently stirring film works for the same reasons the shows did: the strength of the songs themselves.

Uneven but frequently stirring 

After its Venice premiere, Don’t Look Back In Anger opens in the UK and US on September 11, and fans will savour the live material – especially in large-format venues. The documentary includes new interviews with Noel (Oasis’s guitarist and principal songwriter) and his younger brother Liam (the band’s frontman), as well as a wealth of their biggest hits, all played pleasingly loud.

The documentary’s prologue reminds viewers of Oasis’s ascension in the mid-1990s thanks to their blockbuster albums Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? – although the band’s stardom was always threatened by the brothers’ power struggles and bad-boy behaviour. When Oasis broke up in 2009 in the aftermath of a backstage fight right before a Paris show, it seemed unlikely that the group would ever reform. But in 2025, the Manchester unit played a series of sold-out dates across the globe, defying naysayers who assumed that, at some point, Noel and Liam’s old animosities would resurface.

Don’t Look Back In Anger takes us behind the scenes as the band begins rehearsals, then jumps forward to the July 4 Cardiff concert that kicked off the reunion tour. But directors Dylan Southern (The Thing With Feathers) and Will Lovelace – who together helmed both the 2012 LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut Up And Play The Hits and the 2010 blur doc No Distance Left To Run – are after more than a document of the live shows. Don’t Look Back In Anger, which was written and created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) also reflects on the band’s legacy, both for the brothers and for their generations of fans. As Oasis moves from the UK to South America, Asia and the US, the concert scenes occasionally give way to interviews with besotted locals who overcame adversity by listening to the group’s openhearted tunes. 

In their interviews, the Gallagher brothers talk about wanting to rewrite the band’s narrative by delivering triumphant reunion concerts that proved they were not defined by past sibling rivalries. Notably, Noel and Liam walk out on stage each night hand in hand to symbolise their reconciliation, and Don’t Look Back In Anger spends an inordinate amount of time reinforcing the notion that, yes, the brothers are grateful for this second chance. That news is heartening, but it can also come across as a feel-good talking point – much like the digressions with ordinary fans expressing their devotion.

This sense of on-brand messaging extends to Noel and Liam’s discussions about how overwhelmed they are by the outpouring of love from the crowds. Unfortunately, neither brother provides much insight about their relationship or the band’s history, leaning on inspirational generalities, no matter how sincere.

Thankfully, when Don’t Look Back In Anger focuses on the music, the film electrifies. Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos gives the live footage a dynamic glow, and although editor George Cragg too often cuts to ecstatic concertgoers singing and crying — another way that the film wants to emphasise community and renewal — Oasis are in excellent form throughout. The sound design amplifies the roaring guitars and Liam’s snarling vocals, making numbers like ‘Some Might Say’ and ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ detonate on contact. Even ballads such as ‘Wonderwall’ possess a turbo-boost propulsion, while a particularly poignant rendition of ‘Live Forever,’ dedicated to their friend Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of The Stone Roses, who died in November, emerges as a clear highlight.

Southern and Lovelace deftly capture these shows’ sheer enormity, training their cameras on the teeming masses of people moving in unison to the band’s iconic hits. For all of Don’t Look Back In Anger’s efforts to be an inspirational tale of forgiveness and gratitude, it is the concert footage that articulates the argument most forcefully.