Having found themselves thrown together on a local Chicago TV station, Siskel and Ebert’s dislike for one another frequently spilled out onto the small screen, as they frequently disagreed over the relative merits of whatever film they happened to be reviewing that week. The mixed reaction to his curious venture into screenwriting – he wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls in 1970 – isn’t glossed over, while the film’s illustration of his strained relationship with fellow critic Gene Siskel is downright hilarious. Mixing interviews with contemporary photographs and archive footage, Life Itself builds up a rounded picture of Ebert’s intelligence and talent for writing, but also his flaws, such as his battles with alcoholism and depression.

Using his autobiography of the same title as its basis, Life Itself follows Ebert’s path through university (he’d wanted to go to Harvard, but his parents couldn’t afford the fees), via his tenure as editor of a newspaper in Illinois ( The Daily Illini) to his appointment as film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967.

Life Itself is an affectionate yet unflinchingly honest portrait of the late writer and the legacy he’s left behind, and the calibre of the people both in front and behind the camera – Steven Zaillian and Martin Scorsese are producers, while Scorsese and Werner Herzog are among the interviewees – is evidence of just how respected and admired Ebert was and still is. “It is likely I will have passed when the film is ready,” he poignantly noted. At the time, director Steven James ( Hoop Dreams, Head Games, The Interrupters) was making a documentary about Ebert – a film that Ebert knew all too well he’d never live to see through to completion.

Last year, legendary film critic Roger Ebert died from cancer at the age of 70.

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