Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

Aileen Wuornos was sentenced to death in Florida for killing seven men. The documentary follows the meetings held with her in the last months before her execution, and the court process. She says first that she described the killings as self defence, then that this was a lie, then changes it again. Her account slides at every meeting. Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill direct. Broomfield had made an earlier documentary on the same subject in 1992; this is the second, about ten years later. The question at the centre is not the killings but the execution. Wuornos's mental state is plainly disordered in the interviews, and the film asks whether she could be held competent to be put to death. Broomfield was called as a witness in court; the documentary maker became a subject of his own film, and that is part of its structure. Wuornos was executed on 9 October 2002. The last interview was recorded the day before, and it is the hardest passage in the film. The narrative also gives her childhood: abandonment, abuse, pregnancy at fourteen, the street. The same story became the source for a fiction film that is better known; the documentary shows the source itself. Who it is for: viewers who follow crime documentary and the argument about capital punishment. Who it is not for: it is distressing, Broomfield's habit of putting himself forward is contested, and the film offers no relief anywhere.