This film is everything you want in a music documentary.

Just for starters, it captures a vibrant subject in the midst of a life-defining quest. Ndour, a Senegalese Sufi Muslim with a generous aesthetic and philosophy, spends years bringing the tenets and history of his faith to an epic album; then his own countrymen either ignore it or condemn it for blasphemy until it gains traction abroad.

But what makes this movie so potent is the way the director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, renders this story with a lyricism, sensitivity and power that matches Ndour's own. Spirituality, musicality and cinematic momentum merge. It's an elating experience.