Reality | Dir: Tina Satter | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
It was Saturday 3 June when 25 year-old Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) arrived back to her rented Georgia home after doing the shopping. She was confronted by two smiling FBI agents – Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchánt Davis) – whose smiles faded as they questioned her for the next 83 minutes.
Reality (yes – that is her name!) was a yoga instructor and animal lover, who had been in the American Air Force before becoming a United States military contractor as a translator with a top-secret security clearance at a National Security Agency office in Augusta, Georgia.
The FBI alleged that she had leaked classified government information on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections and Tina Satter used the FBI transcript from the actual interrogation of Reality Winner by the two agents in the back room of her house while other FBI agents were going through all her possessions in the rest of the house.
All the dialogue in the film was taken entirely from the transcript of the FBI recording. It is a fascinating and truly disturbing recreation as the agents change gear from being friendly to being threatening in the “completely voluntary” interview, conducted without anyone else being present in the room.
Unfolding in almost real time, it is a competent exercise in authority figures extracting a confession, and the mounting intensity of the drama is in no way compromised by knowing that the real Reality Winner was eventually sentenced to five years for treason.
It was the longest ever for releasing unauthorised government documents to the media and the question for the audience is – how naive was Reality in her actions? She has said that her actions were motivated by a patriotic duty to reveal the truth to the American people.
To her credit, Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner certainly comes across as the girl next door who wants do her best for her country, and the enactment of the transcript reveals the heavy-handed tactics used to bring her down.
Lezly Herbert
You can support our work by subscribing to our Patreon
or contributing to our GoFundMe campaign.
