JIMMY SCOTT: IF YOU ONLY KNEW International Documentary Competition

Best known for his impossibly high singing voice, enigmatic jazz legend Jimmy Scott has been called by The New York Times “the most unjustly ignored American singer of the 20th century.” Scott is the rare comeback kid who achieved rediscovery without ever achieving initial success.

While in his teens, Scott hoofed himself around the jazz world burning with determination and talent, only to have Lione! Hampton and Charlie Parker deliberately leave his name off the labels of their biggest collaborations. A series of personal dramas and bad contracts sent the skinny kid with the distinctive angelic voice and offbeat sense of rhythm back to obscurity where he spent the next 20 years working blue-collar jobs in Cleveland. Despite recording two legendarily unreleased albums that inspired insiders to place him among the pantheon of jazz vocalists, most in the industry had given him up for dead until he made his astonishing star rebirth at 65.

Matthew Buzzell’s JIMMY SCOTT: IF YOU ONLY KNEW traces Scott’s whirlwind life story, and like the man itself, alternates between heartbreak and hope, the drama punctuated only by the uncanny beauty of Scott’s music.