Allen v. Farrow

The series examines the sexual assault allegation made against Woody Allen by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, who was seven when the abuse allegedly occurred. It follows the custody battle between Allen and his former partner Mia Farrow, his marriage to her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who is 35 years younger than Allen, and the events of subsequent years. The film also suggests that Allen "groomed" Soon-Yi for years, and that his sexual interest in her may have begun when she was in high school. Ronan Farrow alleges in the documentary that Allen offered to pay for his college tuition but only if he denounced his mother and sister, which he declined to do. The series examines Allen's films in light of the allegations, Allen did not respond to requests to be interviewed, but the series includes clips from the audiobook of his 2020 memoir Apropos of Nothing. ==Episodes==

The series was produced in secret over three years. Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering and Amy Herdy tracked down court documents and police reports, with some witnesses publicly interviewed for the first time. To keep matters "close to the vest" they called the series the "Eliza Project", using a name once used by Dylan. Allen and Soon-Yi Previn did not respond to the filmmakers' requests to participate in the documentary. Allen's and Farrow's adopted son Moses Farrow, who sides with Allen, declined to cooperate. The series uses passages, spoken by Allen, from the audiobook of his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing. After the first episode aired, the publisher accused the filmmakers of violating the audiobook's copyright. Tony Lyons, President of Skyhorse Publishing, called it a "blatant appropriation of Mr. Allen's intellectual property" that he described as "unquestionably copyright infringement under existing legal precedent." The filmmakers contended that their use of audio excerpts was allowed by "the Fair Use doctrine." ==Allen and Previn statement==

On February 21, the day the series was aired on HBO, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn released a response to the documentary, stating as follows:"These documentarians had no interest in the truth. Instead, they spent years surreptitiously collaborating with the Farrows and their enablers to put together a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods. Woody and Soon-Yi were approached less than two months ago and given only a matter of days 'to respond.' Of course, they declined to do so. As has been known for decades, these allegations are categorically false. Multiple agencies investigated them at the time and found that, whatever Dylan Farrow may have been led to believe, absolutely no abuse had ever taken place. It is sadly unsurprising that the network to air this is HBO—which has a standing production deal and business relationship with Ronan Farrow. While this shoddy hit piece may gain attention, it does not change the facts." ==Documentary producer's response==

Producer Amy Herdy disputed Allen's claim about the timing of the filmmakers' contact with him. She said she reached out to Allen's publicist Leslee Dart in June 2018 and received no reply. She said, "I know they got my request, because I was able to get an assistant on the phone saying [to her], 'You are getting my emails, right?' And she said 'yes.' But they never responded." ==Reception==

On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 84% based on 56 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Allen V. Farrow unearths new evidence in a well-known case to craft a compelling —if one-sided—indictment of society's complicity in upholding powerful people over seeking justice for those they've wronged." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali wrote that the series is "a comprehensive, convincing and ultimately devastating documentary that threatens to burn what's left of [Allen's] career and legacy to the ground." Dorothy Rabinowitz's review in The Wall Street Journal describes it as "an extraordinarily detailed investigative work". ''Variety's'' review said that Dylan speaking out "represents for her, one might hope, a closing of this chapter and, perhaps, a chance to start anew". Brian Lowry of CNN wrote, "despite the painstaking research, viewers might come away not entirely sure what they 'know,' as opposed to what they believe", but said that "even a generous reading of Allen's behavior, however, casts him in a troubling light." Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com gave the docuseries three and a half out of four stars, and wrote that "It is the exact type of expansive analysis that this horrific Hollywood saga has needed, and I urge both those who believe and don't believe the Farrows' side of the story to watch it." Eric Deggans of NPR wrote that the series holds Allen's "past behavior up to modern sensibilities in a way that makes him look terrible", but that "questions will remain about what may be left out, absent the direct participation of the man accused of so much." A Globe and Mail reviewer wrote that viewers get "a complex and sometimes confusing picture of the family dynamic", with Mia Farrow "controlling" the narrative, and that there is an "attempted evisceration of Allen's denials, but some of it is unsupported." He called the series "incomplete". The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant asserted that anything that could exonerate Allen was "systematically pushed aside", while NRC Handelsblad concluded that the miniseries is partial to the point of being "blunt propaganda" by "activist" directors, "void of all pretense of journalistic integrity". Some of the coverage focused on the lack of involvement of two of Farrow's adopted children, Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn, who have offered accounts of their childhood that were critical of Mia Farrow. Screen Rant critic Lindsey Deroche noted that Moses declined to participate, but, still, "in order for the HBO documentary series to appear objective ... it needs to include every voice in the long history of this scandal...For Allen v. Farrow to be as effective as possible, it needs to appear objective and comprehensive—which requires including the perspective of Moses Farrow." ==Awards and nominations==