Many nonfiction cinema purists may balk at the idea of combining documentary and animation. It is not exactly factual to use CGI or hand-drawn cartoons for the visuals of a film based on fact, but animation and documentary have proven to be reliable, albeit unlikely complements. Filmmakers are not always on hand to document every significant episode from their subject, and animation frees them to give an impression of the past that may not be factual, but in certain ways, can be more accurate. They Shot the Piano Player, the latest documentary from Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, uses animation to dramatize the important parts of a compelling story. Without vibrant colors and an artist’s sense of composition, the material would be as staid as a book report.

The conceit for the material is a major gambit, one that may earn broader interest, but could confuse viewers. It starts in 2009 at the Strand Bookstore in New York City, where a (fictional) music journalist Jeff Harris discusses his (fictional) book about Francisco Tenório Júnior, a brilliant (and real) Brazilian jazz pianist and composer who was detained and killed by the Argentine government in 1976. Jeff Goldblum supplies the voice of Harris, a character who is more of a composite than strictly modeled after any journalist (the film is not really based on any book). At first, Goldblum, with his distinctive speech pattern, is a distraction, yet his performance has a dogged sense of curiosity that ensures the investigation into Tenório Júnior’s murder plods along. It is easy to see why Goldblum, an accomplished jazz pianist himself, would be attracted to this material. We see Harris travel to Brazil and Argentina, where he meets friends, musicians, and ultimately government officials. At first, the writer plans to tell the story of bossa nova music, but he finds himself drawn to Tenório Júnior’s tragic story.

There is a lot of visual detail in the backgrounds of They Shot the Piano Player, as if Trueba and Mariscal took actual photographs or video and drew over them. Perhaps that was their approach to the graphic novel of the same name, as the static image of a comic book pane may require more detail in order to draw in the reader. The movement is not exactly fluid, although it’s not a distraction. This is not a film where kinetic choreography is the main draw, although there are a handful of dance sequences that illustrate the ubiquity bossa nova music once had. But dance sequences notwithstanding, most of the film involves actual interviews with people from Tenório Júnior’s past. They are carefully drawn to show the weariness and character that comes with age, and if you listen closely, you will hear how the audio does not sound as professional as the scenes with Goldblum. In other words, the filmmakers animated the recordings to create a visual accompaniment.

In that sense, Trueba and Mariscal’s approach is kind of brilliant. They did not have professional video equipment when they traveled all over Brazil and Argentina, but maybe they had audio recorders and cameras. They could use their memory to fill in the details. While these recreations require imagination on their part, animation allows the film visual freedom that no other medium possibly could. It also allows them to insert the Harris character, someone who always asks the right questions and—in a flourish that stretches credibility—speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese. Once we accept the approach, the story is absorbing because of the throughline of Brazilian jazz and political upheaval. The proliferation of South American dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s led to a crackdown of artistic expression, which then stopped the music scene in its tracks. Tenório Júnior was no radical, just a “potential subversive” (according to the military police who apprehended the pianist) who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Another key difference, or even improvement, over the nonfiction graphic novel is the music itself. Trueba and Mariscal include many scenes of bossa nova performances, including a legendary moment where Ella Fitzgerald joined a trio at a small Rio club, and yet the film never wavers from its central point that Tenório Júnior was a brilliant pianist. His style was light and playful, and yet had a muscular quality that could allow it to lead the melody among any group of players (he was a fan of jazz pianist Bill Evans, who makes a cameo appearance in the film). But the smaller, more spontaneous moments of music are where the documentary finds its soul. Another pianist is given a piece of discarded sheet music by Tenório Júnior, and plays it beautifully on the spot. In the course of recalling their friend, a guitarist and clarinetist perform a song that also serves as a bitter eulogy.

Since there is no surprise about Tenório Júnior’s fate, the film begins to run into a problem when it runs out of momentum. It’s understandable the filmmakers want to honor their elders, many of whom are titans of the music they love, and yet the interviews start to bleed together. After a while, each new interviewee adds few additional details, so perhaps the story could have ended when Harris visited Tenório Júnior’s last known public location, or when he tours the military facility where the musician was tortured and eventually shot (the film continues even after the perpetrator of the killing admits to it on record). It is hard to fault Trueba and Mariscal for their indulgence, however, because this is a film that comes from a place of love and celebration, rather than a searing excavation of the truth.

They Shot the Piano Player (PG-13, 103 minutes) opens in area theaters on March 8.