Hallelujah! Leonard Cohen’s almighty struggle with rejected song that became a classic

A new film tells the story of the song, written over 10 years with 180 versions

Hallelujah is one of the most famous songs ever written, yet a new film reveals it took Leonard Cohen 180 attempts over a decade to perfect - only for it to be rejected by his record company. Nearly 20 years went by before an animated ogre, Shrek, turned the song into a monster hit.

The makers of the documentary, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, had unprecedented access to Cohen's many notebooks, showing his scrawled handwriting and deletions. We got Leonard's tacit blessing' not long before he died in 2016," says co-director Dan Geller.