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Controlling Britney Spears: New documentary to investigate 'intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move singer made'

Film will be released days before Netflix’s ‘Britney Vs Spears’

Sam Moore
Friday 24 September 2021 15:38 BST
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Controlling Britney Spears, a follow-up documentary to Framing Britney Spears, is set to premiere tonight (24 September) on FX and Hulu.

The film will debut just days before Netflix’s own documentary on the singer, Britney Vs Spears, arrives on the streaming service on 28 September.

Directed by Samantha Stark, Controlling Britney Spears will explore new allegations from people who have inside knowledge of the pop star’s life living under the conservatorship controlled by her father.

The film also says it will investigate how the conservatorship has “controlled” Spears’s life including “an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move she made”.

Controlling Britney Spears will also build on The New York Times’s reporting of the singer’s legal battles to free herself of the conservatorship.

Stark also commented: “When Britney spoke publicly about her conservatorship in detail for the first time during a court hearing in June, she said a reason she hadn’t spoken up earlier is she didn’t think people would believe her.

“She said she felt abused under the conservatorship and questioned whether the judge thought she was lying. Britney’s speech motivated the people in this film to seek us out to share their stories — at great risk to themselves — because they felt compelled to back up what Britney was saying with evidence they had or moments they witnessed.”

Britney Spears in 2011
Britney Spears in 2011 (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Spears’s father, Jamie, asked the court to end his daughter’s conservatorship. The “Toxic” singer had previously petitioned the court to remove her father as her conservator.

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