"The Princess," which opened the virtual Sundance Film Festival Thursday and will be released by HBO later this year, examines the beguiling royal's life from her 1981 engagement to Prince Charles of Wales to her tragic 1997 death in a car accident at 36.

The 104-minute film, which arrives amid a flurry of Diana projects, avoids the usual documentary conventions of talking head interviews and narration, instead telling the story entirely through pictures, news clips, audio recordings and interviews with Diana and Charles from that period. .

"I felt a documentary that eschewed the traditional retrospective analysis and went for something more immersive might offer something to the conversation that we're still having about Diana 25 years later," Perkins tells USA TODAY.

"I hope (this film) gives a more complex understanding of both Diana and the relationship we still have with the royal family, as mediated by the press," Perkins says.

Question: What was your relationship to Diana's story before "The Princess?" And what fresh lens did you hope to bring to it? .

Ed Perkins: The day Diana died, I was 11 years old and I remember being woken up by my parents, who were really emotional about it in a way I found surprising.

What I found more interesting was what the Diana story might say about all of us.

Q: There are so many other haunting moments in this film: Journalists proclaiming Diana's wedding just the "beginning" of her fairy tale, or that she has at least "20, 30, 40 years" of public life ahead of her after divorcing Charles