By Jessica Herndon

“The idea of music being art — of music being a work of art and a piece of art — that’s what this is all about,” says Wu-Tang Clan member RZA in Joanna Natasegara’s film THE DISCIPLE, debuting in the Premieres section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

In an era when music streams freely and abundantly and is often reduced to background noise and algorithm fodder, THE DISCIPLE tells the story of perhaps the most audacious protest against digital devaluation ever conceived: Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan’s single-copy album. Natasegara’s documentary traces the unlikely tale of Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh, a Dutch Moroccan rapper from Tilburg in the Netherlands, whose obsessive devotion to his childhood idols propelled him from superfan to inner circle collaborator. 

Azzougarh signed to RZA’s Razor Sharp Records, opened for Wu-Tang on tour, produced some of their tracks, and ultimately masterminded the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album. “I met up [with Tarik] with serendipity in Morocco on holiday, and he told me his story and I was just like, ‘Wow!’” says Natasegara during the post-premiere Q&A. “I knew about this album, but I didn’t know anything about him or how it was made, and I thought everyone would like to hear that.”

The movie unpacks how Azzougarh’s vision of making Once Upon a Time in Shaolin materialized over five to six years of recording sessions across Europe, accumulating 31 tracks featuring not just Wu-Tang members but unexpected contributors like Cher, Game of Thrones star Carice van Houten, and Barcelona soccer players. Encased in an ornate handcrafted silver box, the album was designed to push back against the streaming economy that had killed much of music’s tangible value. “It was a single copy, it was an idea, it was a journey, it was a vision, and it took its own course,” lyricist Shabazz, a Wu-Tang disciple who appears on the iconic album and in the film, tells the audience. “It was a beautiful experience, man.” 

Noting the nostalgia for an era when albums served as soundtracks to lived experience rather than disposable content, Azzougarh reflects in the documentary, “I used to go and buy records and live with that record. It was a fucking event in my life.” The project’s 88-year non-commercialization clause and mid-six-figure production budget underscored its intent: If music matters, make it scarce. Make it art.

The film’s visual style is a work of art in itself. It shifts between black-and-white and color when presenting archival footage and present-day shots. “We were thinking about black-and-white and how we might use it, and one of the things was to use it to delineate past and present,” explains the film’s director of photography, Franklin Dow. “Most of the jumping-off point was really the archives in film, so we wanted the world of the film to be within the color of that archive in the ’90s. So we landed on doing everything in the present in black-and-white.” 

Natasegara doesn’t shy away from the drama that surrounded the album in the documentary. She chronicles the distaste within the Wu-Tang collective over the controversial project and its eventual landing in the hands of Martin Shkreli, the convicted pharmaceutical fraudster who purchased the album in 2015 for a couple million. The film tackles questions about access, ownership, and whether scarcity really restores value or deprives diehard fans of music from a group they love. 

THE DISCIPLE also offers a meditation on artistic ambition in the digital age and the lengths to which an outsider went to preserve what he felt was sacred. When an audience member asks the filmmakers if the original Wu-Tang Clan members have all seen the film yet, Natasegara revealed, “RZA’s seen it, but we finished it last week. But we’re really excited to go to New York and show everyone else.”