American Animals

In 2004 four students at Transylvania University in Kentucky decide to rob the rare books collection. At the top of the list is a first edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America. The plan was learned from films, and it comes apart on contact with reality. Bart Layton directed. The form is doubled: interviews with the real thieves are cut into the dramatised scenes. Years after prison, all four remember their own account differently from each other, and the film does not correct the contradiction, it shows it. Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson star. The first attempt is abandoned when they find more security than expected. On the second they get away with two books. Trying to have them valued at Christie's in New York is what identifies them and gets them arrested. It premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 88 percent, the consensus calling it a queasily compelling look at bad decisions and corrosive entitlement. Layton won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for Best Screenplay and a British Independent Film Award for Best Debut Screenwriter. Who it is for: viewers who like heist films and narratives where documentary and fiction mix. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to sympathise with the leads. The film does not hide that these four were privileged and bored.