Cobain: Montage of Heck: Courtney Love says Kurt Cobain documentary brought her and daughter Frances Bean Cobain closer

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Courtney Love has described watching the Kurt Cobain documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck as a healing experience for both her and their daughter Frances Bean Cobain.

Montage of Heck, the only film about the Nirvana frontman to be authorised by his family and produced by his daughter, takes an unflinching look at his life from the moment he was born up until his untimely death.

The film uses never-before seen video footage, art work and cassette tape recordings, providing a rare glimpse into his life and relationships away from the glare of the spotlight.

In an interview with director Brett Morgan for V Magazine, the Hole singer said the intimate film was difficult to watch for both her and Frances. “Grief, in terms of dealing with it technically, psychologically, I’m still a little bit of a mess about it,” she said.

“I didn’t want to see it. [My agency] said, 'You cannot go to Sundance and promote this film if you don’t go see it.' So I really had to man up, and I asked Frances to come with me and she didn’t want to see it a second time because it had been, for her own reasons, harsh on her.

“He died when she was a year-and-a half-old, so she doesn’t know him except for the way the public knows him. It was such a public death.

“So, to see it in that room with my daughter was very cathartic and I was very happy to spend a little time with him and to find out, to see things and hear audio, and see into his heart. It was an important moment of bonding between Frances and me, and I think it’s very healing for our family and for our relationship."

Love said Morgan had helped her 22-year-old daughter come to terms with her father’s death “in a way that I certainly couldn’t do and that no book could do”.

Frances was less than two-years-old when Cobain died at the age of 27, and a tumultuous relationship with her mother followed.

When asked if the film had brought Love and her estranged daughter closer, she replied: “Yes it has. I think that those few extra minutes with him for me, and an extra two hours with him for her, has been really good.”

Morgan started work on Montage of Heck eight years ago, where he was given unrestricted access to over 4,000 pages of writing and 200 hours of unreleased music and audio. Love said Frances, as executive producer, “did a really good job of being there for her dad and being involved in what is part of the family business”.

"Unfortunately, that’s part of what she and I have to do. We go through a process of doing projects and stuff—and it’s not that unfortunate. It’s ethically correct,” she added.

Frances, a visual artist, told Rolling Stone the film was “the closest thing to having Kurt tell his own story in his own words”.

“For me, the film provided a lot more factual information about my father,” she said. “It was factual evidence of who my father was as a child, as a teenager, as a man, as a husband, as an artist. It explored every single aspect of who he was as a human being.”

Cobain: Montage of Heck is in cinemas now, available on digital download on April 24 and on DVD and Blu-ray on 27 April.