Reality

Every line in this film is real. Tina Satter took the script word for word from the FBI's transcript of the interrogation. The scene: 3 June 2017, Augusta, Georgia, where a government contractor named Reality Winner comes home from the shops to find agents outside her house. The next few hours are essentially the whole film. The fidelity extends to strange details. Josh Hamilton, playing an agent, sneezes at the point where the transcript records his character sneezing. Sydney Sweeney said working with this kind of text challenged her, because it was written to record, not to perform. Satter had staged the same material as the play Is This a Room; the film is her directing debut, written with James Paul Dallas. It screened at the Berlinale. Who it is for: viewers who like tension produced by politeness rather than weapons, and a life closing while three people chat in a back yard. Who it is not for: anyone wanting the background. The film does not cover the leaked document, the prosecution or the sentence; it gives you only those few hours.