Reality film review: Jaw-dropping drama about 2016 election whistleblower Reality Winner

This film tells the story of a woman who leaked a classified document that confirmed the existence of Russian interference in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to power.

Sydney Sweeney in Reality

Reality (M)
In cinemas
★★★★
Reality is a jaw-dropping real-life drama involving the interrogation of a young American whistleblower by FBI agents. The film takes realism to a new level because every word of dialogue spoken by a cast of excellent actors is transcribed from the FBI agents’ recording of the interrogation, a recording that lasted 1.5 hours.

Every word spoken, no matter how inconsequential, is reproduced here along with the pauses, the clearing of throats and the strained laughter that occasionally occurs. Elements of the interrogation that have been redacted are represented by moments in which the screen goes blank. The young whistleblower is beautifully portrayed by Sydney Sweeney, a talented young actor who has made her mark in, among other things, The White Lotus.

This powerful material was originally produced as a play titled Is This a Room?, which was adapted – written is the wrong word – and directed by Tina Satter and which premiered off-Broadway in 2019. Now Satter, making an auspicious debut as a feature film director, has successfully transferred the play to the screen.

On June 3, 2017, Reality Winner, a young woman in her mid-20s, arrived at her home in Augusta, Georgia, after shopping for groceries, to be greeted by two casually dressed FBI men, Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchant Davis). They politely tell her they have a search warrant for her home and her car; other agents, among them an imposing character (Benny Elledge) who is never named, arrive, yellow crime scene tape is wound round the perimeter of her suburban house and her dog and cat are secured. Reality, after serving in the US Air Force as an intelligence officer, had been working for a small company that had a contract with the National Security Agency (NSA). She was fluent in Farsi among other languages, was working as a translator and had top security clearance.

The opening sequence of the film shows her at her desk while TV monitors located above her on the office walls are tuned to Fox News where the day’s top story is the firing of FBI director James Comey by President Donald Trump.

It soon becomes clear that the agents know that Reality has illegally copied a classified document that confirmed the existence of Russian interference in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to power.

The interrogation, which mostly takes place in an empty room in Reality’s rented house, gradually breaks the young woman down – Sweeney is superb in the role as this seemingly relaxed and untroubled girl gradually folds under the calm but relentless interrogation of the two agents. The fact that she is dressed in shorts and was totally unprepared for this confrontation makes her even more vulnerable.

As well as being a devastating portrait of a whistleblower who risked her freedom for what she thought was right, the film is very powerful dramatically, with an ominous music score by Nathan Micay adding to the tension. It’s a troubling, unsettling and beautifully made production, all the more notable for being a debut feature that rigidly adheres to the actual recording that the FBI men made on the day that a brave young woman lost her freedom.

---

Belle and Sebastien: The New Generation (PG)
In cinemas
★★★½

Cecile Aubry’s 1965 book Belle et Sebastien, about the friendship between a cute boy and his even cuter great pyrenees dog, has been regularly brought to the screen for both cinema and television – there was even a Japanese anime version, and one of the films was set during World War II and had the inseparable companions confronting Nazi soldiers.

The latest iteration seems to be contemporary. When Seb (Robinson Mensah Rouanet) misbehaves, his busy mother, Cecile (Caroline Anglade), who has to go to Prague on business, leaves him with her sister, Noemie (Alice David), and his grandmother, Corinne (Michele Laroque), who live on an isolated sheep farm in the mountains. Grumpy at first, Seb settles in and is soon befriended by Belle who is owned by Gas (Syrus Shahidi), the rather unpleasant son of Corinne’s neighbour, Yves (Aurelien Recoing). When Seb sees that Gas is mistreating Belle, the boy frees the dog from the cage in which she has been confined and they become inseparable. Marauding wolves sometimes attack the sheep but Belle is there to help and she even leads Seb to a secret underwater lake, a hitherto unknown water source for the water-strapped farm.

Beautifully shot on spectacular locations, the film is very easy to take.

Children from 10 years and up should enjoy it if they’re prepared to read the English subtitles. Dog lovers of all ages will be entranced.

---

Watandar: My Countryman (PG)
In cinemas
★★★½
Muzafar Ali came to Australia a few years ago as a refugee from Afghanistan. Now established as a photographer, he is the focus of this excellent documentary which follows him as he seeks out descendants of the Afghan cameleers who came to Central Australia in the 19th century.

Ali is a very affable character with an infectious laugh and an ability to see the positive side of things. He’s also blessed with an inquiring mind that takes him to cemeteries in Marree and Port Augusta, among other places, where the original cameleers are buried.

On his journey round South Australia, with a side trip to Broken Hill, Ali meets the descendants of the cameleers who are, without exception, fascinating and lovely people who have old photographs to show and heartfelt stories to tell.

Perhaps the highlight of the film involves Elaine “Lainie” Mackean, an Aboriginal woman, who tells another of those achingly sad Stolen Generations stories and how she was reunited with her real family. Meanwhile the Taliban has taken over in Afghanistan, again, and Ali is in constant touch with a number of anxious friends who are living there in fear for their lives and freedoms.

Experiencing the rapport that develops between this Afghan refugee and the mixed-blood grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the 19th-century Afghans who married Indigenous women makes this simple but affecting documentary a pleasure to experience.