With over 3 million subscribers on her channel and more than a billion combined views, Lily Hevesh is a YouTube sensation. Her accomplishments are even more impressive when one learns she is the only female in the field of professional domino toppling, a niche realm of the videosphere dominated by teen boys before Lily started her channel, Hevesh5, in 2008 – at the mere age of 9. Lily Topples the World is a deep dive into the life of a young woman who grew up online and conquered an entire corner of the internet, turning a quirky hobby into a high-profile business. 

Director Jeremy Workman could easily have banked on the extensive archival footage of Lily’s work, a neverending pit of hours and hours of mesmerising domino toppling videos. He cleverly chooses not to, intertwining the images with heartfelt testimonies. We see Lily’s parents tear up when recounting meeting their daughter for the first time, the girl adopted from China as a young baby. They reflect on Lily’s ingrained fear of rejection and ponder if her unknown ancestry might have deprived her of something fundamental. In contrast, Lily appears to almost shrug, stating simply “I grew up in an American family. I didn’t know what it meant to be Asian or Chinese”.

Inherently introverted, Hevesh blossoms as her channel grows, finding support and understanding in an online community that often does the opposite. The incessant trolling is there, vile remarks piling on the comment section, many over the young girl’s gender and ethnicity, but the documentary opts to only rapidly remark on the bad, making a conscious choice of highlighting how Lily turned lemons into a worldwide lemonade franchise. “With dominos, if you have an idea, it’s likely you can do it”, Lily points out. And do it she did. 

RATING: 4/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Lily Hevesh

DIRECTOR: Jeremy Workman

SYNOPSIS: Lily Topples The World follows 20-year-old Lily Hevesh – the world’s greatest domino toppler and the only woman in her field – in a coming-of-age story of artistry, passion, and unlikely triumph.