The new documentary Kim’s Video may start as an archival film about a once beloved, shuttered video store. However, we end with a sprawling cinematic adventure of mystery and intrigue that follows one cinephile’s search to find a collection of over 55,000 rare videos previously thought to be lost to time. His stranger-than-fiction investigative quest spans multiple continents and even involves the mafia. Ultimately, this delightful documentary highlights the importance of cinema and the power of preservation that will captivate cinephiles and audiences everywhere.

In the 1980s, Kim’s Video was the ultimate physical media mecca for movie nerds (directors David Wain and Alex Ross Perry popped up to praise its importance to their careers). Located in New York’s Lower East Side, “Kim’s” (as its devoted members called it) “had everything.” Rare auteurist cinema, experimental short films, and international arthouse, these copies were a treasure trove for faithful film fans. However, most of this archive’s legality was questionable, as they were mostly bootlegged versions (famously, Jean-Luc Godard sent the store a cease and desist letter). This was thanks to one man, the store’s owner: devoted cinephile Yongman Kim, who once had seven video stores with over 55,000 films circulating between them.

However, with the inevitable turn to streaming, physical media and video rental stores–including Kim’s–would end up going out of business. This devastated its patrons (like the Coen Brothers, who allegedly had racked up $600 in late fees). This would also spur one cinephile into taking action: David Redmon, the co-director of Kim’s Video and the film’s narrator and main character. This documentary begins like most others: troves of old VHS footage mixed with new modern-day footage and interviews. He even interviews Yongman Kim himself to share stories about his former store. But when David learns from a former employee what happened to the entirety of the hollowed collection in one of the interviews, he undertakes a continents-spanning search fit for any conspiratorial movie.

Of all the options Kim received for where to donate his collection upon the store’s closing, he chose the offer from the small town of Salemi, Sicily, which promised to digitize everything and play them at a tourist destination, celebrating Kim’s massive collection and contribution to cinema preservation. However, years later, nothing materialized, and no one reached out. Arming himself with just his camera (and the spirits of cinephile gods like Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch on his shoulders), David travels to Sicily and begins asking for “Kim’s.” Meeting mostly non-English speakers, David ends up befriending everyone from locals, to tourism center employees, authorities, the chief of police, and even the mayor. Some of his dead ends ultimately expose people’s ties to the mafia. But David locates the collection and channels the movies he was raised on, designing a plan to save the archive.

Co-directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video is a thrilling documentary that I was excited to watch as it continued to go places I didn’t expect it to. The archival footage mixes wonderfully with lo-fi music (by Matthew Dougherty and Enrico Tilotta) as its soundtrack. What starts as a seemingly innocuous topic becomes a portal into a whole new world that reminded me of the curious investigative journalism of How To With John Wilson (both for how David narrates and shoots the film in the first person view).

As David goes further down the rabbit hole of potential corruption and intrigue, he constantly returns to calling on his film god angels, reflecting on directors’ movies and quotes, which invoke their spiritual selves into the story and his mission. “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to,” says Jean-Luc Godard. Released by Drafthouse Films (who, spoiler alert, play a part in saving the day), Kim’s Video highlights the undeniable reality that physical media can be lost to time if we don’t actively preserve it. It’s a movie worth telling, seeing, and saving.

‘Kim’s Video’ opens in select theaters on April 5 before expanding on April 12.