Dir: Bart Layton
UK/2011/95mins
Print Source: Madman Entertainment
Official Selection: SxSW
Official Selection: Sundance
This stylish film is made for the big screen.
Through a combination of interviews and dramatised recreations Bart Layton’s Sundance nominated documentary tells the story of a thirteen-year-old Nicholas Barclay who went missing in Texas in 1994 but then re-appeared in Spain years later. As the film develops it becomes clear that the boy - now a young man - has changed, not least in his acquisition of a French accent, but neither the police or his family seem to have noticed. What unfolds is a strange, mysterious tale of identity that exceeds anything imagined by a Hollywood scriptwriter.
With a background in television documentary Layton has the gift of a natural storyteller, he knows how to deliver and here he offers a unique documentary that recalls the early work of the great Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line has been evoked by some critics) and the all absorbing power of the documentary medium as envisioned in works like Touching The Void.
Screens with The Wilding