To put it mildly, the Donald Trump presidency had a few bumps in the road, and several controversies marred his election. One of those was an alleged collusion between Trump and Russia to affect voting machines, in which firing FBI director James Comey – who had recently announced an investigation into the potential of Russian voting interference – brought about much discussion on whether Trump had obstructed justice by doing so.
This specific controversy is the backdrop to Tina Satter’s REALITY, a real-time chamber piece about the NSA memo on Russian interference that leaked to the media in 2017, the consequences of which reverberated through the American justice system. On June 3rd, 2017 – 25 days after Trump fired Comey – the FBI disturbed 25-year-old air force veteran and linguist Reality Winner as she returned her groceries to her home in Augusta, Georgia. Her work translating Farsi to English, and her prior infraction of accidentally removing top secret information from the NSA building, has taken her to the top of the FBI’s whistleblower search list. The agents involved recorded the entire thing.
Adapting from her own play based on the interrogation transcript, ‘This Is A Room’, Satter takes on a Herculean task with REALITY, her debut feature: transforming a stage production into a compelling film, all while continuing to keep the same true information and dialogue of the interrogation transcript. The 82-minute film covers that 107-minute interrogation that took place between Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney), Special Agent Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Special Agent Taylor (Marchánt Davis), interpolating between the transcript, scribing itself across the screen, and the actors repeating the lines verbatim.
This review was posted on June 9th 2023. Full review linked below.
Comments