Bobby Fischer Against the World

Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011) is Liz Garbus' documentary feature, available to watch online on iFILM. It follows the American chess prodigy who, over the summer of 1972 in Reykjavik, took the world title from Boris Spassky and turned a board game into a front line of the Cold War.

Garbus traces Fischer's path from a Brooklyn kid who outplayed grown masters to a recluse who vanished from public life entirely. She stitches archival footage of the Reykjavik match — where Fischer's demands nearly torpedoed the whole event — to interviews with people who knew him: Garry Kasparov, Judit Polgar, photographer Harry Benson, and even Henry Kissinger, who once phoned to talk him out of quitting. As the years pass, the brilliance curdles into paranoia, antisemitic rants, and talk of government surveillance.

The film is honest about how genius and collapse can ride together, and it refuses to tidy Fischer up into a hero. You don't need to know chess to feel the pull; Garbus frames him as a tragic figure whose gift came at a brutal price. Stream Bobby Fischer Against the World online on iFILM.