HOME TRUTHS (REALITY)

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Reality Winner is not the kind of name you should forget in a hurry.

However it should register even more with people now that Tina Satter's movie 'Reality' is hitting cinemas.

A hit with audiences and critics when it screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, it is based on a real FBI transcript of the interrogation of a 26 year old woman in her home in Augusta, Georgia.

Reality Winner was accused of leaking sensitive US Government intelligence in 2017.

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Based on the play 'Is This A Room?' that Satter which was first staged in 2019, the film stars Sydney Sweeney as Winner, a former member of the US Air Force who developed Arabic language.

With her ability to translate Farsi and Pashto, she was employed by the Pluribus International Corporation in Augusta, a small contractor providing services to the National Security Agency in the US.

When we first see Reality in Satter's movie, it is in long shot working at her office workstation while a television above her broadcasts Fox News coverage of the firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Donald Trump.

Twenty five days later she is returning from a shopping trip and pulls into her driveway when two men approach her immediately.

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Identifying themselves as FBI employees, they are Marchant Davis' Agent Wallace Taylor and Josh Hamilton's Agent Justin C Garrick.

Agents Taylor and Garrick inform Reality that she is the subject of an investigation, the details of which will be revealed in due course.

Their warrant requires her to be interviewed and her home searched.

Before entering the house, they pepper her with questions about how many weapons she has on the property, their exact location, if she has any pets and if there is anyone else living there.

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As more agents arrive and Taylor prepares the search of her property, Garrick sticks to Reality like glue, engaging in small talk about her CrossFit numbers and also watching her every move.

After arranging for her dog to go to a caged off area and allowing her to go inside to tether her cat under close FBI supervision, Reality agrees to be interviewed in an empty spare room in her house that resembles a cell.

Over the course of the next hour, the agents bombard her with questions - initially trying to tease out if she has any idea what she is suspected of before showing her the search warrant.

It eventually becomes clear that she is suspected of leaking sensitive intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

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Agents Garrick and Taylor are keen to understand what the motive of the leak may have been and how exactly the information was released.

What Satter duly delivers is a cat and mouse interrogation film which, like Fran Kranz's gripping 2021 movie 'Mass,' is dialogue driven, yet also somehow avoids being theatrical.

Given that it is based on the actual FBI transcripts, the director adopts a realist approach to events, treating them as if they are unfolding in real time.

With the help of her film editors Jennifer Vecchiarello and Rob Dublin, she splices in shots of the interview transcript and audio sound waves.

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Rather cleverly Satter and her editors play with their audience by redacting sensitive information during the interrogation.

They do this by making Reality momentarily vanish from the screen in mid sentence or by adding audiovisual glitches.

Paul Yee's camera is trained mostly on Sweeney, who carries much of the movie.

However Hamilton and Davis' contribution is also critical to the film's success.

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Occasionally, there are interruptions from John Way as another agent or Benny Elledge as an individual named Joe.

Sweeney, who was so good in the first season of 'The White Lotus' is simply superb, making great use of what Reality calls her "resting bitch face".

Her character's apparently cool demeanour occasionally gives way to nervous darting looks and eventually, as the screws are tightened and her evasiveness is exposed, the toll taken on her becomes more apparent.

Hamilton is also excellent as Agent Garrick, engaging in uneasy small talk with Reality but also expertly ratcheting up the pressure as the interrogation goes on.

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Davis impresses as Agent Taylor who is a little bit better at the small talk but also no nonsense and thorough in his approach when negotiating the terms of the FBI agents entering the house.

It is to Satter's credit that she wisely avoids the heightened drama and histrionics that a true crime documentary filmmaker might deploy in telling Winner's story.

Rather than lead her audience by the nose with a manipulative musical score, she aims for cinema verite and she revels in the banality of the film's suburban setting.

The small talk between the agents and Reality may on the face of it be dull and the flow of the dialogue may be occasionally interrupted by barking dogs but that only adds to the tension.

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Satter makes her audience, particularly those unfamiliar with Winner's story, work hard.

As they watch the verbal ping pong, audience members are inevitably drawn into trying to figure out where the agents are going with their lines of enquiry.

Few films this year will be as impressively choreographed as Satter's movie.

Few will be as gripping.

© HBO & Vertigo Releasing

Few performances will be as astute as Sweeney, Hamilton and Davis.

And few movies this year will have you thinking about state secrets and what the public has a right to know.

'Reality' is a gripping, thought provoking film that few directors wilo manage to trump this year.

('Reality' opened at the Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast and UK and Irish cinemas on June 2, 2023(