Of all the musicians to suffer tragically premature deaths, it’s possible that none became so well-known on the strength of so little material as Jeff Buckley. When the dark angel of 90s rock drowned in the Wolf River in Memphis, just 30, he only had one album to his name, the sensational Grace, and had lived more like a Mississippi Delta blues singer than a New York indie darling with a historic record contract. His estranged father, the musician Tim Buckley, died young too, at 28. In It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley, a new documentary from director Amy Berg (Deliver Us From Evil), Buckley’s deal-with-the-Devil mystique is deconstructed to glorious effect. Through never-before-heard archival tapes and touching accounts from Aimee Mann, Ben Harper, ex-girlfriends, his mother, and others, the long shadow of his death is rolled back to reveal how the man with the holy, haunting voice that brought Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah to new heights would scale the scaffolding at Led Zeppelin concerts, disappear for days at a time, and hole up in his East Village apartment, only to emerge with music so grand and full of heart that there’s no doubt he died in a state of grace. —Nathan King

Amy Berg will discuss the film following its showing at New York’s IFC Center on July 29. The film hits theaters nationally on August 8