‘Wham!’ Documentary Had an Unusual Choice for a Director

Two young Londoners — one of Greek Cypriot origin, the other of Egyptian descent — set up a pop band in the 1980s that goes on to sell more than 30 million records. They break up several years later, at the pinnacle of their fame, when the two hit the ripe old age of 23.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of Wham!, the British pop duo, and its two stars, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. It’s a story that the director Chris Smith tells in a Netflix documentary, which is nominated in Sunday’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs.

Other contenders in the documentary category include “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” about the actor’s battle with Parkinson’s disease; and “American Symphony,” a year in the life of the musician Jon Batiste.

Smith previously directed the Emmy-nominated 2019 documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” about a fraudulent music festival that landed its organizer in jail.

Two years earlier, he directed “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” on the making of the 1999 movie “Man on the Moon,” in which Jim Carrey played the entertainer Andy Kaufman.

Smith said that he was approached to shoot “Wham!” by its producers. There is no narrator: The tale is told using documentary footage of the duo during their career, paired with audio excerpts from interviews with the two pop stars themselves, which are voiced over — Michael died in 2016 at 53.