Kennebeck, Sonia

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares99 Views

    ‘Reality Winner’ Review: Caught in the Cross Hairs

    by

    Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary unpacks the circumstances surrounding its subject, but fails to crack her complexity.It is not always fruitful to compare a documentary about an event with a narrative film portraying that event. Yet “Reality Winner,” Sonia Kennebeck’s hazy nonfiction chronicle of Reality Winner — a National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced under the Espionage Act in 2018 when she was 26 — and this year’s film “Reality,” a searing dramatization of her interrogation, form a tidy double feature. The latter eschews context to paint an evocative real-time picture of a young woman in the F.B.I.’s cross hairs; the former painstakingly maps out the state of affairs surrounding Winner, only to see her personhood trickle away, like water cupped in one’s palms.Rotating among a handful of timelines, Kennebeck’s documentary spends the most time with Winner’s parents and sister as they push for Winner to receive a fair trial. These scenes are interspersed with blurred re-enactments (not unlike those starring Sydney Sweeney in “Reality”) and actual field-recording audio, as well as an interview with Winner, who orates directly into the camera à la Errol Morris’s Interrotron technique.One of the more troubling aspects of this complex case was The Intercept’s mishandling of the leaked document, and “Reality Winner” unpacks how The Intercept’s actions contributed to exposing Winner’s identity to the N.S.A. Indeed, the documentary’s most valuable testimonies come from other whistle-blowers (including Edward Snowden) who come across as extraordinarily well equipped to analyze the story’s knottier details.Despite this access, “Reality Winner” fails to decode its ideologically heterodox subject. The film is clear in showing how the media put her into boxes: a traitor, a terrorist, a progressive, an innocent, a lost cause. But who is Reality Winner? This documentary doesn’t dig deeper than her patently well-meaning exterior.Reality WinnerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Enemies of the State’ Review: Seeking Proof Shrouded in Shadows

      by

      This documentary on the strange case of Matt DeHart weaves uncertainty into its structure.Was Matt DeHart an Air National Guard veteran who, having spent time in hacktivist circles, stumbled on information so explosive that the F.B.I. had him physically tortured during an interrogation process? (That’s what he claimed when he fled to Canada after 2013.) Or was he a fugitive from justifiable charges of producing and transporting child pornography, a case he suggested had been concocted?Journalists who have covered the DeHart saga — and the summary above is only the tip of the iceberg — have tended to note when corroboration becomes impossible. The remarkable thing about “Enemies of the State,” a documentary directed by Sonia Kennebeck and executive produced by Errol Morris, no stranger to epistemological mysteries — is that it comes close to offering decisive yes and no answers, with evidence to back them up.It becomes a documentary about re-evaluating biases, a process that may well implicate the filmmakers. As Tor Ekeland, a lawyer who represented DeHart, says in the movie, “The only way to make the facts in this case make sense is to entertain some kind of wild conspiracy theory.” Kennebeck must have recognized the danger of doing just that. Matt’s parents, Paul and Leann, featured extensively, appear to have reached a point where no amount of paranoia would be unjustified, yet they seem utterly convinced of themselves. Even the third parties interviewed — the National Post journalist Adrian Humphreys, the McGill professor Gabriella Coleman — wind up confronting blind spots.Kennebeck weaves uncertainty into the formal design, staging re-enactments mingled with original audio, for instance. The movie is a spoiler deathtrap, but the questions it raises are fascinating.Enemies of the StateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More