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Rory Kennedy touched down at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival as the director of the upcoming documentary “Queen of Chess.” The film chronicles the 15-year success of Hungarian chess prodigy Judit Polgár as she overcomes champion Garry Kasparov and her controlling father over 15 years.
“I did a deep dive in researching and I was just stunned by what I read,” Kennedy said at the Variety Studio presented by Audible about what compelled her to tackle Polgár as a doc subject. “She had been the number one female chess player for 26 years. She was the youngest grand master. She beat Bobby Fisher’s record. She’s the only woman to break through the top 10 chess players in the world and that’s still true to this day. I was amazed that I had never heard of her story.”
As a member of the Kennedy family, Rory continues to find her lineage at the center of headlines. Her late cousin, John F. Kennedy Jr., is soon getting the Ryan Murphy treatment with FX’s limited series “American Love Story.” The show follows the relationship between Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. The couple was on their way to Rory’s wedding when they were killed in a plane crash.
“I am not sure that I will watch it,” Rory Kennedy said about the series. “I was quite close to John and continue to miss him every day. It’s been a great loss for our family and a great loss to the country. They are people we feel very close to and saddened by their loss. But there are opportunities for younger people who did not know their story to learn about it. Depending on how the show is done, it could also be a wonderful thing to their character, their personality, their contribution to society. We will see.”
Rory Kennedy also touched upon the recent loss of her first cousin Tatiana Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter. Schlossberg died in December at 35 years old, soon after chronicling her blood cancer battle in a devastating New Yorker column in which she also championed greater access to healthcare.
“She was very brave and courageous,” Rory said. “That article in the New Yorker reached so many hearts and minds and helped people understand who she was. It was so beautiful to me because she was an extraordinary person. The loss there is … she was 35 years old. The world is a little less good without her around.”
When asked about Schlossberg’s essay and some of her final public words being about championing healthcare, Rory responded: “There is an urgency around what’s happening with healthcare in our country and around the world. There are a lot of doctors and scientists coming together, alerting us that what is happening right now is endangering the health of this country. We really need to pay attention to the scientists and the doctors.”
English (US) ·