The Woman Who Wasn't There

Directed by Angelo Guglielmo, this documentary is a rare case of a film made about its own source. Tania Head said she had been on the seventy eighth floor of the South Tower when the plane hit on September 11, that she crawled through the flames, that a dying man entrusted her with his wedding ring, and that she lost her fiance in the North Tower. She rose to the presidency of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network, secured official access to Ground Zero, was photographed with the mayor and the governor, and took no money for any of it, donating to the group instead. The director began filming in 2006, when she approached him wanting a film about survivor resilience, and he interviewed her for hours and became her friend. It all collapsed in 2007 when the New York Times ran routine verification: she had no record at the universities she claimed, the firm she said employed her had no office in that building in 2001, and a Barcelona newspaper found she had enrolled in a master's program in Spain ten days after the attacks. Her real name was Alicia Esteve Head and she had been in Barcelona on September 11. The film is as much about what the deceived do next as about the deception. Who it's for: Fans of true crime and identity fraud documentaries, especially cases where the motive stays opaque. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting a clean explanation, since the film leaves the question of why unanswered.