Review: ‘They Shot the Piano Player,’ starring the voice of Jeff Goldblum

March 14, 2024

by Carla Hay

A scene from “They Shot the Piano Player” (Image by Javier Mariscal/Sony Pictures Classics)

“They Shot the Piano Player”

Directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal

Some language in Portuguese and Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the 2000s (with re-enacted flashbacks to the 1960s and 1970s), the animated docudrama film “They Shot the Piano Player” features a predominantly Latin cast of characters (with a few white people and African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: American music journalist Jeff Harris (a fictional stand-in for “They Shot the Piano Player” director Fernando Trueba), investigates the mysterious 1976 disappearance of Brazilian piano player Tenório Jr., who was an highly respected musician in the Bossa Nova musical movement.

Culture Audience: “They Shot the Piano Player” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching unusual documentaries about Brazilian music or true crime cases.

Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) in “They Shot the Piano Player” (Image by Javier Mariscal/Sony Pictures Classics)

“They Shot the Piano Player” mostly succeeds in its intention to be an unconventional documentary, but much of the story gets bogged down in repetitiveness. Overall, this animated film is watchable for people interested in Brazilian music or true crime. It’s a hybrid of a fictional narrator telling a true story, with audio recordings of real interviews featured in the documentary.

Directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, “They Shot the Piano Player” was written by Trueba. After screening as a work in progress at the 2023 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, “They Shot the Piano Player” had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival. The movie then made the rounds at several other film festivals in 2023, including the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival.

In the production notes for “They Shot the Piano Player,” Trueba (who is a Spanish filmmaker) says that sometime around 2019, he discovered the talent of Brazilian pianist Tenório Jr. while listening to a Brazilian album from the 1960s. Trueba became fascinated with finding out more about Tenório after discovering that Tenório (whose full name was Franciso Tenório Jr.) had vanished while on tour in Argentina in 1976, when Tenório was 35. Trueba went to Brazil and Argentina to interview family members, friends and associates of Tenório to try to solve the mystery of what happened to Tenório. Many of the resulting interviews are featured in “They Shot the Piano Player.”

“They Shot the Piano Player” creates a fictional narrative around these real interviews. In the movie, which takes place in the 2000s, the person doing the interviewing is a fictional New York City-based journalist named Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum), whose quest to find out the truth begins when he writes an article in The New Yorker about Bossa Nova, the music genre that combines Brazilian music and jazz. Bossa Nova, which originated in Brazil in the late 1950s, flourished in Brazil and in other countries.

As a result of this article in The New Yorker, Jeff gets a book publishing deal to write a nonfiction book about the history of Bossa Nova. While listening to a 1960s Brazilian Bossa Nova album, Jeff discovers Tenório Jr. when he hears a piano solo on the album. Jeff is intrigued to find out that Tenório Jr. hasn’t been featured on any musical recordings in more than 30 years. Jeff (who only speaks English) wants to know why, so he travels to Brazil to interview people. Jeff is sometimes accompanied by his Brazilian friend João (a fictional character, voiced by Tony Ramos), who is a tour guide/language interprerter of sorts during these trips.

Through a series of interviews, Jeff finds out that in 1976, Tenório disappeared in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires, during a tour as a band member with singer Vinicius de Moraes and guitarist/singer Toquinho. Jeff then becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of what happened to Tenório, so he travels back and forth between Brazil and Argentina to get answers. (It’s not that much of a mystery, since the title of the movie says it all.) Tenório’s disappearance happened around the same time of the 1976 coup d’état that ousted Isabel Perón as president of Argentina, so it’s not much of a surprise that this political turmoil (and the thousands of innocent people who were victims of it) are part of this story.

Most people who knew Tenório tell Jeff that it was widely believed that Tenório was murdered in Buenos Aires in 1976. But who murdered him and why? Those questions are answered by some people who are interviewed in the movie and an archival interview that Jeff hears. The interviews also reveal what type of person Tenório was by the surviving people who knew him best. Jeff also visits several of the places where Tenório used to go, such as recording studios and nightclubs.

Jeff’s book editor Jessica (a fictional character, voiced by Roberta Wallach) sees how enthusiastic Jeff has become about solving the mystery, so she tells Jeff that instead of writing a book about the history of Bossa Nova, he should instead write a book about what happened to Tenório Jr. “They Shot the Piano Player” actually begins in 2009, after the book is published, and Jeff is doing a book reading at The Strand bookstore in New York City. The rest of the movie is a flashback to Jeff tellng the story about his journey in writing the book.

Through stories and descriptions from interviews, a portrait of Tenório emerges as a highly respected and talented musician who was passionate about music, who didn’t really care about becoming rich and famous, and who had a messy personal life. At the time of his disappearance, married man Tenório had a mistress and a pregnant wife, who was expecting their fifth child. His mistress Malena Barretto (who is interviewed in the movie) was staying with Tenório at a hotel in Buenos Aires on the night of Tenório’s disappearance. She had been feeling sick at the time, so he left the hotel to find a pharmacy to get some medicine for her. That was the last time she saw him.

“They Shot the Piano Player” is packed with several interesting interviews, but after a while, many of them say the same things over and over about how talented and sweet-natured Tenório was. The movie could have used better editing in reducing some of this repetitiveness. There are also some extraneous scenes that look like nothing but travelogue footage.

Most of the people interviewed are musicians who knew Tenório, such as Toquinho, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Ben Shank, Caeton Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Jorge “Negro” Gonzales, Ian Muniz, João Donato, Laércio de Freitas, Raymundo Bittencourt, music producer Roberto Menescal and sound engineer Umberto Candardi. Family members interviewed include Tenório’s widow Carmen Magalhäes, his sister Vitoria Tenório and his uncle Manuel Tenório.

Also interviewed are several of Tenório Jr.’s friends in the Rio de Janeiro’s arts community, including Alberto Campana, the owner of Bottle’s Bar and Little, the nightclub where Tenório Jr. got his first big break; poet Ferrreira Gullar, who says that a psychic named Mrs. Haydée told Tenório Jr.’s father that Tenório Jr. was murdered; and family members and associates of de Moraes, such as his ex-wife Marta Santamaría, ex-brother-in-law Carlos Santamaría and friend Elena Goñio. Experts who weigh in with interview include Agrentina’s National Memory Archive coordinator Judith Said, human rights lawyer Luiz Eduardo, filmmaker/university professor Rogério Lima and journalists John Rowles, Nano Herrar and Horatio Verbitsky.

The animation is eye-catching and looks like painting art come to life. However, some people might not like the animation style that’s in this movie. The scenes where Jeff is visiting nightclubs to watch performances are enjoyable. And his investigation will keep viewers interested. It’s especially impactful when Jeff finds out what reportedly happened on the last day of Tenório’s life.

There are pros and cons to Goldblum’s constant narration in this movie. On the one hand, he gives a very good voice performance that remains engaging throughout the film. On the other hand, Goldblum has such a distinctive and famous voice, a lot of vewers might find his celebrity voice distracting. You never forget that you’re listening to Goldblum, which makes it harder to believe the narration is from a character named Jeff Harris.

Despite these narrative flaws, “They Shot the Piano Player” is a very good history lesson about Bossa Nova and about a fairly obscure and underrated Bossa Nova musician. The movie also tells a tragic story of someone who died simply because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “They Shot the Piano Player” doesn’t make any statements about all the political turmoil in South America, but it tells a compelling human story about someone affected by this turmoil who left an influential legacy in Brazilian music.

Sony Pictures Classics released “They Shot the Piano Player” in select U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2023, with a wider release in U.S. cinemas on February 23, 2024.

Review: ‘This Is a Film About the Black Keys,’ starring Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney

March 12, 2024

by Carla Hay

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney in “This Is a Film About the Black Keys” (Photo by Jim Herrington)

“This Is a Film About the Black Keys”

Directed by Jeff Dupre

Culture Representation: The documentary film “This Is a Film About the Black Keys” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) who are all connected in some way to the American rock duo the Black Keys and who discuss the band.

Culture Clash: The Black Keys members Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, who have very different personalities from each other, go through their ups and downs in their careers and their personal lives.

Culture Audience: In addition to appealing to the obvious target audience of Black Keys fans “This Is a Film About the Black Keys” will appeal primarily to people who like watching documentaries that are similar to “Behind the Music.”

“This Is a Film About the Black Keys” is a competent but not outstanding documentary that comes across as a “Behind the Music” type of promotional showcase. It has candid interviews and great archival footage, but the film has some obvious omissions in the Black Keys’ story. The documentary raises some questions that never get answered. However, the behind-the-scenes footage makes the documentary worth watching, even if you know that the filmmakers could have made more courageous choices in how this story was told.

Directed by Jeff Dupre, “This Is a Film About the Black Keys” had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival, about a month before the release of the Black Keys’ 12th studio album “Ohio Players.” The calculated timing of both the movie’s premiere and the album’s release has “Behind the Music” influences written all over it, since most artists who’ve agreed to do a “Behind the Music” episode do it to promote a new album. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it usually means that the artists won’t allow the most unflattering aspects of their lives to be explored in depth in whatever documentary they’re doing to coincide with the release of a new album.

“This is a Film About the Black Keys” follows the “Behind the Music” rock band biography narrative formula, almost beat by beat: A band comes from humble beginnings, slowly builds up a fan base from releasing albums and touring, has breakthrough mainstream success, and then gets caught up in the pitfalls of fame—usually having to do with huge egos, money and substance abuse. “This is a Film About the Black Keys” checks all of those boxes.

The Black Keys have a few characteristics that set them apart from most rock artists: They are a duo when most rock artists are either solo artists or are part of band with at least three members. The Black Keys members—lead singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney—also don’t have a typical rock band origin story of a bunch of people forming a band because they were already friends or because they went through a lengthy search to find the right people to be in the band.

Instead, Auerbach (born in 1979) and Carney (born in 1980) say that they were more like friendly acquaintances than close friends when they started making music together. Carney and Auerbach both grew up on the same street and went to the same high school in their hometown of Akron, Ohio. The documentary dutifully covers biographical information that can be found on the Internet about the Black Keys. Carney and Auerbach are interviewed, as well as some of their family members, business associates and music industry fans.

While they were students at Firestone High School in Akron, Auerbach was a popular athlete but his real passion was music, having learned to play guitar from the age of 7. Carney says of his self-described nerdy teenage years: “I couldn’t get a girl to talk to me, so I got into rock and roll.” The “opposites attract” theme is repeated throughout the movie: Carney says he’s the extrovert who prefers to handle the duo’s business affairs and do interviews, while Auerbach is the introvert who prefers to do most of the duo’s songwriting and musical arranging.

Something that Auerbach and Carney have in common is that they both have several musicians in their families. Auerbach’s mother Mary Little says that most of her siblings are musicians. Auerbach’s cousin Robert Quine is a well-known avant-garde rock musician. Early on in their relationship, Auerbach and Carney also bonded over their admiration of musician R.L. Burnside.

As teenagers, Auerbach and Carney would occasionally play music together, but they were in different social circles in high school. Carney and Auerbach both attended the University of Akron but would eventually drop out to become full-time musicians. Auerbach says that he would skip classes in college so he could spend time in his room to play guitar. Carney describes his college years as still being at a freshman after three years of college.

Auerbach and Carney ended up forming a musical partnership in 2001. It happened after Carney had been hired to be a recording engineer for Auerbach’s band. The other musicians in the band didn’t show up, so Auerbach and Carney began jamming together and decided they could make music together as a duo. Auerbach says, “Right away, Pat and I bonded over our love of recording.” He says that they both still prefer recording over touring.

After some debate over what to call their musical act, they chose the Black Keys. The name was inspired by a friend named Alfred McMoore, who would sometimes call people the “black keys” of a piano if he was upset with them. Auerbach says in the documentary about the duo’s decision to become full-time musicians without having a record deal or a steady income: “There was no back-up plan. We had to make it work.”

By their own admission, the Black Keys have communication problems with each other. Auerbach and Carney say that they have always had difficulty talking about their problems. They say that they usually with their personal issues with each other by trying to ignore them. However, it causes resentment over time, which has led to periods of Auerbach and Carney being estranged from each other.

Nowhere is these communication problems more evident in the documentary than in a sequence showing Carney at a soundcheck for a Black Keys arena show while Auerbach is busy shopping for clothes. Carney is furious that his bandmate isn’t there for the soundcheck and rants about how unprofessional Auerbach is for not telling Carney and other people where Auerbach is during this soundcheck.

Meanwhile, Auerbach (accompanied by a few members of his entourage) is shown trying on high-priced clothing at a store and being treated like rock star. When the time comes for the Black Keys to do the concert, Auerbach and Carney are standing next to each backstage but don’t talk about Auerbach’s soundcheck absence that was upsetting to Carney. For this concert, Auerbach is wearing the jacket that he bought at the store.

The Black Keys’ slow and steady rise to Grammy-winning, arena-rock success is a familiar tale of “alternative rock” artists who want a lot of praise, recognition and money for what they do, but they don’t want to be perceived as “sell-outs” or fake. They also want to be able to experiment musically without alienating their core fan base. John Peets, former manager of the Black Keys, says, “They are a fiercely independent band.”

The Black Keys were independent in the beginning of their career, having signed with a series of independent labels and producing their own albums. The band began getting positive reviews from their first album—2002’s “The Big Come Up”—and toured relentlessly for their albums. Carney did a lot of the duo’s bus driving and tour managing in the early days of the Black Keys. He’s the raconteur who is more likely than Auerbach to tell stories in the documentary about their experiences with dingy motels, low-paying gigs, and travel mishaps on the road.

In the early years of the Black Keys, their personal lives of the Black Keys also had parallels to their professional lives. Auerbach and Carney both got married to their first wives around the same time: Carney married his high-school sweetheart Denise Grollmus in 2007. Auerbach married Stephanie Gonis in 2008. Both marriages ended in very messy and public divorces—Carney and Grollmus split in 2009, while Auerbach and Gonis broke up in 2013, with their divorce becoming final in 2014. n the documentary, the divorces are described in vague terms that essentially amount to saying “irreconcilable differences” or “growing apart.”

The details of these divorces are left out of the documentary, but there is a little bit of acknowledgement in the movie about how these divorces affected the Black Keys’ work: By Carney’s own admission, he began drinking a lot more during his divorce from Grollmus, thereby making the recording of the Black Keys’ 2010 album “Brothers” much more difficult. It’s also mentioned that Auerbach’s divorce from Gonis had a big influence on the emotionally raw and wounded lyrics of the Black Keys’ 2014 album “Turn Blue,” the album that nearly broke up the Black Keys because it was made during a low point in the relationship between Carney and Auerbach. In retrospect, Carney says that during this tumultuous time, the Black Keys probably should have gone on vacation instead of doing an album and tour.

Gonis is the only wife or ex-wife interviewed in the documentary. Her comments that are in the movie mostly describe when her relationship with Auerbach was going well. However, she says their divorce happened because she and Auerbach drifted apart because of all the time he spent away from home. Gonis jokes about their “shotgun wedding” and says that although Auerbach is a loving father, she felt like a single mother raising their daughter Sadie Little Auerbach, who was born in 2008 and is seen briefly in archival footage.

The documentary does not mention any of the sordid information that was widely reported about the divorce filings, such as Gonis’ allegations that Auerbach abused her, or Auerbach’s allegations that Gonis attempted suicide twice in one day. Auerbach was married to Jen Goodall from 2015 to 2019. He is not forthcoming about what really happened in the failures of his two marriages. It isn’t too surprising that Auerbach is unwilling to talk about his personal problems in a biographical documentary that is largely about his life, since he is frequently described in the documentary as being secretive and mysterious, even by people who’ve known him for a very long time.

A turning point for the Black Keys came in 2007, when they collaborated with a pop music producer for the first time: Danger Mouse, whose real name is Brian Joseph Burton. At the time, it seemed to be an unlikely collaboration: Danger Mouse was a Grammy-winning hitmaker best known for the Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 R&B/pop smash “Crazy.” However, Carney says he fell in love with the song, which he describes as “cinematic.” The result of the first collaboration between the Black Keys and Danger Mouse was the Black Keys’ 2008 album “Attack & Release.”

The Black Keys went on to get an even larger audience with their 2010 mainstream breakthrough album “Brothers,” which featured the hit “Tighten Up.” It was the first album the Black Keys released after the duo relocated to Nashville and after collaborating again with Danger Mouse. The Black Keys won three Grammys because of “Brothers” and won another three Grammys for their 2011 album “El Camino,” which featured the hit “Lonely Boy.”

Although Carney comes across as the more socially confident than Auerbach, Carney admits that behind the scenes, he’s had longtime insecurities about his place in the Black Keys, because Auerbach has often treated him as a backup musician instead of as an equal. One of the biggest rifts that they had was in the mid-2010s, when Auerbach recorded his first solo album without telling Carney, who thinks that this secrecy was a betrayal to Carney. Auerbach says in the documentary that the reason for the secrecy was that Carney was “impossible to be around” at that time. Perhaps one of the more honest moments in the documentary is Carney expressing his fear that he is replaceable in the Black Keys.

The Black Keys’ personal problems within themselves, with each other and in their marriages get uneven exploration in the documentary. Carney’s drinking problem that severely affected the recording of “Brothers” is mentioned but somewhat glossed over. No one comes right out and says that Carney is an alcoholic, but that’s something the documentary filmmakers should have asked Carney. The documentary also doesn’t mention if Carney every got professional help for his drinking problem.

Carney’s marital problems are also described in generic terms or not mentioned at all. He admits that his divorce from first ex-wife Grollmus was bitter, but he barely mentions his second ex-wife Emily Ward, whom he was married to from 2012 to 2016. Carney’s third wife is Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Michelle Branch, whom he married in 2019. Their scandalous separation in 2022 and subsequent reunion—Branch publicly accused him of infidelity, filed for divorce, and then decided to call off the divorce—are not mentioned at all. In the documentary, Carney is briefly shown spending time with his and Branch’s son Rhys James (born in 2018), who appears in some Black Keys rehearsal footage.

A documentary does not need to go the tabloid route and air a lot of dirty laundry. But when a celebrity documentary is made about a celebrity’s life, and several people in the documentary say the celebrity’s personal problems directly affected the celebrity’s work, it behooves the documentary filmmakers to get more details and introspection from the people who caused the problems or were directly affected by the problems. It’s especially noticeable that the documentary doesn’t seem to care to mention if Carney got professional help for what many people describe in the documentary as his alcohol addiction.

In a director’s statement in the movie’s production note, Dupre says about the making of this documentary: “I was going to need Pat and Dan to tell me everything. What they told me first was that they weren’t always very good at communicating with each other. Would they open up to me? I soon realized I wouldn’t need to lean on them quite as much as I thought I would because their music would speak volumes if we let it.”

Dupre further commented in the statement: “Want to know who they were and what they were feeling at every step of the way? Listen to their songs. That became the operating principle in the editing room: as much as possible, let their music tell the story and drive the narrative. … Pat and Dan did open up and come through in their interviews … in spades. But their incredible music expresses who they are and what they’ve been through beyond talk and beyond words.”

That’s all well and good, but “This Is a Film About the Black Keys” is not a concert documentary or a documentary about the making of an album. It’s supposed to be a biographical documentary that looks at all aspects of their lives, but the movie comes across as playing it a little too safe, as if the filmmakers wanted the approval of the Black Keys’ publicity team too. The documentary has very good concert scenes, but gives very little insight into the inspirations or recordings of specific Black Keys songs.

The people interviewed in the documentary do not include any critics of the Black Keys. Oher interviewees include Dan Auerbach’s father Chuck Auerbach; Patrick Carney’s brother Michael Carney; Fat Possum Records executives Matthew Johnson and Bruce Watson; Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Beck; and journalist Peter Relic, who gave the Black Keys’ their first review in Rolling Stone magazine.

The Black Keys’ notorious feud (which has since been settled) with Jack White (formerly of the rock duo the White Stripes) is not mentioned at all in the documentary. The closest thing that the documentary will mention to any music feuds that the Black Keys had was when Carney got some social media hate from Justin Bieber fans in 2013, when Carney a reporter asked Carney to comment on Bieber not getting any Grammy nominations that year, and Carney made a flippant comment that Bieber should be happy with being rich. This short-lived and petty trolling from angry Bieber fans is quickly laughed off in the documentary for what is. But if you believe everything in this documentary, the Black Keys never had any uncomfortable rivalries with other musicians, when the reality is that they did.

People can enjoy the Black Keys’ music in any number of ways, including this documentary. As entertaining it might be to look at the impressive array of archival Black Keys footage that the documentary has compiled, the movie’s overall story of the Black Keys looks very much like a sympathetically slanted portrait of how the Black Keys want to see themselves and not a complete story of who they really are. Based on the final results, the documentary filmmakers seemed all too willing to go along and leave perhaps the hardest parts of the Black Keys’ story left untold.

Review: ‘Four Daughters’ (2023), starring Hind Sabri, Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui, Nour Karoui, Ichraq Matar and Majd Mastoura

March 10, 2024

by Carla Hay

Pictured from left to right: Eya Chikhaouim, Ichraq Matar, Nour Karoui and Tayssir Chikhaoui in “Four Daughters” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

“Four Daughters” (2023)

Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania

Arabic with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Tunisia, the docudrama film “Four Daughters” features an all-Tunisian group of people discussing a family whose two of four daughters became terrorists.

Culture Clash: Through re-enactments and interviews, the women’s mother and the other two sisters take a candid look at their family dynamics that led them to this point.

Culture Audience: “Four Daughters” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in movies about how families are torn apart when members of the family leave to become radical terrorists.

Hind Sabri and Olfa Hamrouni in “Four Daughters” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

“Four Daughters” is an impactful movie that layers documentary elements with dramatic acting to make a film within a film. By using some of the real-life people in the re-enactments, it’s both an examination and cinematic therapy of a family’s love and painful fracturing. The transitions between the documentary-styled interviews and the dramatic acting are mostly seamless, although it all might be a bit disorienting to some viewers.

Directed and written by Kaouther Ben Hania, “Four Daughters” had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where the movie won three awards: L’Œil d’or (the prize for Best Documentary), in tie where the award also went to “The Mother of All Lies”; the François Chalais Prize (the award for journalistic excellence); and Prix de la Citoyenneté (the Citizenship Award). “Four Daughters” also won Best Documentary Feature at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards.

“Four Daughters” begins by introducing the three women who portray themselves in the re-enactments: Olfa Hamrouni is the divorced mother of the four daughters who inspired the name of the documentary. Eya Chikhaoui (born in 2003) and Tayssir Chikhaoui (born in 2005) are Hamrouni’s two youngest daughters, who were living with her at the time this movie was filmed. Hamrouni’s two eldest daughters are Ghotrane (born in 1998) and Rahma (born in 1999), who both became raidical terrorists, and left Tunisia to go to Lybia. A caption in the movie’s introduction says that Ghotrane Chikaoui and Rahma Chikaoui were “devoured by the wolf,” which is a euphamism for saying that they became consumed by the radical ideology that took them away from their mother and sisters.

“Four Daughters” has several scenes of Hamrouni, Eya and Tayssir acting in scenes with and getting to know the actresses who are in the re-enactments: Hind Sabri has the role of Hamrouni; Ichraq Matar has the role of Ghofrane; Nour Karoui has the role of Rahma. Sabri is seen early in the movie getting makeup applied before she is about to meet Hamrouni. Sabri admits that she feels “stressed,” as if it’s her first movie and that she’s nervous to meet the woman she has the responsibility of portraying.

The first meeting between Sabri and Hamrouni goes very well. Hamrouni assures and warns the anxious Sabri about what “Four Daughters” director Ben Hania has planned for the movie: “Kaouther isn’t going to invent anything in the story. It’s all true. And that could be disturbing for you.”

In a separate scene, Hamrouni admits in an interview that acting in a movie about her life has made her feel like the heartbroken-but-resilient character of Rose in “Titanic.” Hamrouni gets more emotional when she, Eya and Tayssir meet Matar and Karoui. At first, the mother and daughters are in awe of how much the actresses resemble Ghotrane and Rama.

But then, Hamrouni breaks down in tears as they all sit on a sofa together. Hamrouni begins to cry after asks Matar to sit next to her on the sofa, because Hamrouni says she was the real Ghofrane would have sat next to her if she were there. Eya says, “That’s what’s going to be so painful. We are going to relive it all. It’s going to open the wounds.”

Ghofrane is described as having a calm presence, and she was closer to her mother than Rahma was. Later in the movie, the family says that Ghofrane was the one who became a religous fanatic first and started wearing a hijab at all times. Rahma then followed and became a more hardcore radical than Ghofrane. For a while, Hamrouni and youngest daughter Tayssir also wore hijabs, but they never became radicalized. Eya was the only one in this family of women who refused to wear a hijab and become a fundamentalist Muslim.

Viewers of “Four Daughters” will have to be patient before the movie gets to the story of how Ghofrane and Rahma drastically changed. The first two-thirds of the movie are a combination of showing and telling how the family was before Ghofrane and Rahma reached the point of no return in becoming estranged from their mother and sisters. What emerges is a portrait of the family that was already splintering from generational trauma and abuse.

Hamrouni begins by talking about and re-enacting her unhappy marriage. It’s implied that it was an arranged marriage because Hamrouni makes it clear that she was never in love with her husband. On their wedding night, which is re-enacted in the movie, she resisted having sex with her husband, whose first name is not mentioned in the film. They got into a physical fight, and blood ended up on her wedding dress.

Hamrouni proudly says that she got her way and avoided having sex with her husband that night. However, Hamrouni’s sister scolded her that night and told her that she needed to be a good wife and do what her husband expected her to do. Hamrouni then says that for the rest of her miserable marriage, on the rare occasions that she and her husband had sex, it was only to conceive children.

“Four Daughters” has only one actor portraying all the movie’s male characters: Majd Mastoura. He portrays the abusive men in Hamrouni’s life: her husband (whom she eventually left) and an ex-con boyfriend named Wissem, who was in prison for murder but escaped from prison during the chaos of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011. Mastoura also has roles as a boyfriend of a teenage Ghofrane and as a police officer who takes a report when a frantic Hamrouni reports Ghofrane missing after Ghofrane ran away from home.

“Four Daughters” takes a brutally honest look at the problems in the family. Hamrouni says that her ex-husband was physically and verbally abusive to her and her daughters. Ghofrane got the worst of the abuse, her sisters say, because Ghofrane was the eldest child. However, Hamrouni admits that she physically abused her daughters too. She would often whip them out of anger. A tearful and regretful Hamrouni says that she ended up mistreating her daughters in the same way that Hamrouni’s abusive mother mistreated Hamrouni.

Hamrouni acknowledges that she was overly strict and paranoid about her daughters dating or being interested in sex. Part of that paranoia stems from Hamrouni’s own childhood, when she says that she and her sisters were raised by a single mother, and men would try to force themselves into the home to sexually assault them. Hamrouni says she had to disguise herself as a man to protect herself, her mother and her sisters. Hamrouni’s bad experiences with her male partners also undoubtedly affected her attitude in how she tried to instill in her daughters a fear of men.

Hamrouni says that her relationship with Wissem started off as a fairy-tale romance, where she fell in love with him like a giddy teenager. She said the fact that Wissem (who was a butcher as his job) was in prison for murder didn’t bother her because he treated her so well. But a dark family secret is revealed in the documentary: Eya and Tayssir say that Wissem was far from the “nice guy” he appeared to be, because he sexually abused all four of the sisters.

Hamrouni doesn’t comment in the documentary about this sexual abuse, but when it’s mentioned, her eyes and facial expression give away that she knows that it happened, and she feels ashamed that she didn’t protect her daughters. Apparently, Wissem had her fooled, and Hamrouni was blinded by her love for him. Rahma and Ghofrane say that their mother blamed them for Wissem going away. A scene briefly shows actor Mastour as Wissem in a prison cell, which implies that Wissem went to prison for these sex crimes.

In the movie, Eya is more talkative and expressive than Tayssir, although Tayssir later says that Eya is less likely to stand up for herself than Tayssir is. The family also experienced hunger and poverty. A re-enactment of a family dinner scene reveals that even when the family was starving, Ghofrane was very picky about what she would eat. By contrast, Rahma would eat almost anything that she was given.

An emotionally powerful re-enactment scene happens when Eya and Tayssir, portraying themselves, are sitting on the same bed as Mastoura, who portrays the predatory Wissem in this scene. Eya tells Wissem, “I hate you” with an intensity that affects actor Mastoura so much, he has to leave the room, and he asks to have a private conversation off-camera with director Ben Hania.

Meanwhile, Eya is clearly feeling some kind of catharsis from doing this scene, because she seems very proud of herself for doing this scene without breaking down and crying. After actor Mastoura asks to take a break because of how he was affected by this scene, Eya says that Mastoura should understand that she’s only acting. However, the painful memories are all too real for Tayssir, who quietly cries during this emotionally heavy scene.

During “Four Daughters,” the actresses are seen observing the real-life people they are portraying and practicing things such as mimicking their voices and body language. Old videos of Ghotrana and Rahma are shown to the actresses portraying them. All four daughters were in a parade for then-Tunisian president/dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in 2011. Hamrouni says that she and her daughters were loyal supporters of Ben Ali.

It’s unclear when the family really began to experience financial hardships, but Hamrouni says the family’s life got worse after the Tunisian Revolution. Hamrouni went to work in Libya as a house cleaner. And that meant her daughters were often not under her supervision.

Older daughters Ghofrane and Rahma started to rebel by doing things such as skipping school. They began listening to heavy metal and dressed in Goth style, much to the disapproval of Hamrouni, who thought that Ghofrane and Rahma were becoming satanists. The movie has a re-enactment of an exorcism on Rahma.

And so, when Ghofrane and Rahma began seemed to have religious awakenings by ditching their Goth lifestyles and dressing in hijabs, Hamrouni says that she was initially relieved because she thought that it meant that her two oldest daughters were on the right track to turn their lives around. Little did the family know that this switch from one extreme to another would turn out to cause a permanent family rift.

There are moments in “Four Daughters” that are not easy to watch, especially scenes involving abuse. Rahma became so fanatical, she would whip Eya and Tayssir for things such as being late to prayer sessions. Rahma would also frequently accuse her younger sisters (especially Tayssir) of being “infidels.”

All four sisters had a fixation on death and would play games where a sister would pretend to be dead, and they would pretend to have burial and funeral rituals. Eya says these games were “fun” for the sisters, like “going to Disneyland.” But these morbid games are indications of severe emotional turmoil.

“Four Daughters” also shows how these family members see how they are perceived by the actresses who are spending time getting to know them. Karoui, who has the role of Rahma, keenly observes that Rahma’s religious fanatacism was a way for Rahma to control and manipulate the sisters’ overly strict mother after Rahma’s Goth rebellion phase didn’t work.

There are also indications that the actresses want to keep a certain professional distance when the family members start to blur the lines between wanting to get to know the actresses and treating them like real family members. Hamrouni essentially admits that she was closest to eldest daughter Ghofrane. But when Hamrouni asks actress Matar (who has the role of Ghofrane) if Matar would want Hamrouni to be her mother in real life, Matar looks uncomfortable and doesn’t answer. Matar’s non-response says it all, and Hamrouni tries not to look hurt and embarrassed.

For better or worse, “Four Daughters” doesn’t reveal until toward the end of the film what happened to Ghofrane and Rahma after they became terrorists. Some viewers might think this information comes too late in the movie. However, the buildup to these final scenes is meant to show that this family—even with their problems before the separation—had a certain unity that is now gone. “Four Daughters” might not heal the family’s heartbreak over the two daughters who left the family. The movie is a cautionary tale of what can happen when people lose loved ones to radical ideologies that can destroy family relationships.

Kino Lorber released “Four Daughters” in select U.S. cinemas on October 27, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on December 19, 2023.

Review: ‘Bobi Wine: The People’s President,’ starring Bobi Wine

March 9, 2024

by Carla Hay

Bobi Wine in “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” (Photo by Lookman Kampala/National Geographic Films)

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”

Directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp

Some language in Luganda with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Uganda, from 2017 to 2022, the documentary film “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” features a predominantly African group of people (with a few white people) discussing the political turmoil in Uganda and the efforts of pop-star-turned-activist Bobi Wine efforts to be elected president of Uganda.

Culture Clash: Before, during and after his campaign, Wine and his associates experience violence, harassment and detainment from government and military officials.

Culture Audience: “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about activists seeking democratic freedoms in a politically restrictive environment.

Bobi Wine in “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” (Photo courtesy of Southern Films/National Geographic Films)

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” should be required viewing for anyone who wants to see what can happen when a nation’s democracy is corrupted and a military regime suppresses freedom. This illuminating documentary is more than just an intimate look at singer Bobi Wine’s political activism, including his campaign to be elected president of Uganda in 2021. It’s also about a fight for democracy and resistance to political oppression.

Ugandan-born filmmakers Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp make their feature-film directorial debut with “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” which was filmed from 2017 to 2022. The documentary—which is a mixture of archival footage and footage that was filmed exclusively for the documentary—had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, when the movie had the title “Bobi Wine: Ghetto President.” “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” has garnered numerous accolades, including a nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film for the 2024 Academy Awards, and winning the prize for Best Feature at the 2023 International Documentary Association Awards.

Born in 1982, Wine (whose birth name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) became famous in the mid-2000s for being a pop star who has political and social issues in his songs. Wine became known as an outspoken advocate for equal rights, as well as showing compassion and advoacy for underprivileged people. In 2017, he was elected to become a member of the Ugandan Parliament.

Being an elected government official seemed to be an unlikely path for this entertainer. As mentioned in the beginning of the documentary, Wine (who describes his childhood as being a “ragamuffin”) was born into poverty in Kampala, Uganda, and he had a chaotic upbringing where his parents weren’t always around to raise him. As a student at Makerere University in Kampala, he studied music, drama and dance. It was while he was a student at Makerere University that he met hs future wife Barbara “Barbie” Itungo Kyagulanyi, who was a student at Bweranyangi Girls’ Senior Secondary School.

Kyagulanyi says in the documentary about meeting Wine: “The time I met him, he was at university. I was still a village girl. He was in his second year of university. … And we met at the [Kampala] National Theatre.” Wine says at the time, he was starring in a play titled, “Lady, Will You Marry Me?” It’s quite the prophetic title.

Wine says of meeting Kyagulanyi for the first time: “We didn’t know each other. We didn’t even like each other, because I had a crazy life.” He also mentions how Kyagulanyi’s stable, middle-class background of being raised by her two parents was a very different upbringing from his. “She had a mom and dad and as very beautiful. She was very moralistic—too moralistic.”

Despite these differences, the couple fell in love and got married in 2011, after living together for 10 years. Wine and Kyagulanyi have four children together: daughter Shalom Namagembe Kyagulanyi, son Solomon Kampala Kyagulanyi, son Shadraq Shilling Mbogo Kyagulanyi and daughter Suubi Shine Nakaayi Kyagulanyi. Throughout the documentary, Kyagulanyi is shown as a loyal and supportive wife and mother. She is often with Wine at his public appearances.

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” is told in chronological order, which makes the story in the documentary much easier to follow. There is some footage of Wine (who has not stopped making music) in the recording studio. Several of his songs are featured in the documentary, with some of the social-justice lyrics shown on screen. His songs in the documentary are “Tuliyambala Engule,” “Time Bomb,” “Freedom,” “By Far,” “Corona Virus Alert,” “Uganda Zukakai,’ “Afende,” “Situka” and “It’s Gonna Be Fine.”

The year 2016 was the re-election of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, a military general who has been in this presidential position since 1986. At the time, the Ugandan constitution had a law that Ugandan presidential candidates had to be younger than 75 years old. Under this law, Museveni (who was born in 1944) would not have been eligible to run for president of Uganda for the 2021 election. Wine quickly built a reputation for being one of the growing numbers of Ugandans who are eager for change in what they see as Museveni’s corrupt regime.

The documentary shows how Wine’s initial enthusiasm about being a member of Parliament turned to discontent—especially after a contentious parliament vote that changed the Ugandan constitution to remove the maximum age limit for people running for president of Uganda. Wine was among those opposed to lifting the age limit, as a way to not only prevent presidents from staying in office for too long but also to give the Ugandan presidential position a chance for a new direction in whomever would replace Museveni. In the end (as shown in the documentary’s archival footage), 315 members of the Ugandan Parliament voted to remove the age limit, while 62 members (including Wine) voted to keep the age limit.

After this parliament vote, a defeated-looking Wine is shown sitting alone in a back office room and saying, “I think it’s high time that Uganda starts thinking about different options. There’s no democracy in Uganda.” It isn’t long before Wine (the leader of the political party called the National Unity Platform) and many of his close associates become the targets of government attacks and harassment, much of which is shown in the documentary.

Among the many ordeals: Wine and several of his associates were arrested numerous times over this five-year period shown in the documentary. The charges against Wine included illegal possession of firearms and treason. He and his associates were detained at military barracks in Gulu, Uganda. There’s harrowing footage of Wien having to get medical care in a hospital because of torture injuries that he got while in custody at the barracks.

Every time that Wine was arrested on what he says were false charges, there were massive public protests, including people chanting “Free Bobi Wine.” Ugandan singer Alex Namugera also recorded a hit song called “Free Bobi Wine,” as shown in the documentary. A movement was born, with Wine perceived as the hero of this movement. The more popular that Wine became, the more his life seemed to be in danger.

In the town of Arua, Uganda, a 2018 rowdy political rally for parliament candidate Kassiano Wadri (who was endorsed by Wine) turned deadly when police shot and killed Wine’s driver in a car. The official reason for this killing was that police said the it was in self-defense for protester who were throwing rocks at Museveni’s motorcade. Wine publicly said that the shooting was an assassination attempt on Wine because the shooter probably thought Wine was in the car.

The documentary also has multiple scenes of how all of this persecution is affecting Wine’s family too. One of the more poignant scenes is when his four children see him for the first time in a hospital after he had to get treated for his injuries. There’s another scene where Wine’s eldest daughter Shalom writing to him while he is in the military barracks. She says, “I pray that they clear his name and is set free, but I’m also scared.”

Wine’s wife Barbie tries to stay as strong as possible. But, like everyone else, she has her human vulnerabilities. She breaks down and cries during a moment when she heard about the shooting at the rally and didn’t know if her husband is dead or alive. Wine also has moments where his emotions overtake him, especially when it comes to his family.

Shortly after he was released from the military barracks, Wine went to the United States to fo more medical treatment and to bring more attention to his cause. At a National Press Club press conference, Wine is seated next to human rights attorney Robert Amsterdam when Wine makes this statement: “I am nobody’s victim. I’m a survivor … I represent resilience.”

Wine is also resolute in not becoming a refugee. He says was born in Uganda, and he will die in Uganda. Despite all of the government oppression in Uganda, Wine frequently speaks of love of Ugandans, especially those who are often ignored or downtrodden by government systems.

At the National Press Club press conference, Wine says of average Ugandans: “We still stand for justice, equality and freedom for everybody. We represent the power of the people.” It’s also mentioned in the documentary that the movement for change in Uganda’s government is mostly a youth-driven movement, since about 75% of Uganda’s population is under the age of 35.

Later in the documentary, Wine says that there used to be a time when Museveni was Wine’s favorite revolutionary. Wine adds, with some melancholy: “It’s very, very disturbing I’m at war with my once-favorite. I really, really would like to have a frank and honest conversation with him.” Wine says that one of the things he would ask Museveni is what happened to Museveni’s belief that politicians should not overstay in positions of power.

Dr. Kizza Besigye, a Ugandan presidential candidate from 2001 to 2016, offers this observation in an audio interview quote in the documentary: “No leader has ever peacefully handed over power to another in the history of our country, It’s a consequence of Ugandan rule. It’s a military regime.”

As for Museveni, he appears briefly in the documentary in an interview where the unidentified interviewer can be heard but is not seen asking him questions. When asked to respond to a tragedy where military police shot and killed several people at a political rally, Museveni places almost all the blame on anyone but the police. And, not surprisingly, he attempts to describe Wine as unpatriotic.

“Who started the violence?” Museveni asks when making claims that protestors were throwing things at the rally, and the police were reacting in self-defense. His response to the fact that innocent bystanders, including children, were killed by police gunshots is to say that it was unfortunate that the dead victims were caught in the crossfire. He also blames “Western elements” and “the ones who put the bankrupt ideas in the heads of the actors. They get quite a lot of encouragement from foreigners and homosexuals.”

When the interviewer challenges him and asks what homosexuals have to do with political violence in Uganda, Museveni continues to put the blame anywhere but himself and his supporters. He adds, “Bobi Wine in particular is an agent of foreign interests.”

In 2019, Wine formally declared he was running for president of Uganda. The pressure on him and his supporters intensified, but he remained defiant and resolute in his cause. As the documentary shows (but won’t be all detailed in this review, so as not to spoil this information for people who don’t know what happened), extreme things took place in the days leading up to and after the Ugandan presidential election of 2021, including the Ugandan government shutting down Internet access for the entire nation.

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” shows some of the violent force used by military and police during political rallies that express opposition to Yoweri Museveni. However, directors Bwayo and Sharp have said in interviews that they left the most disturbing violence out of the documentary. According the movie’s production notes, Bwayo was “arrested, imprisoned, and shot in the face at close range while filming” this documentary. An epilogue caption in the documentary acknowledges that there are untold numbers of people (estimated to be in the thousands) who have died because of the political turmoil during the period of time that this documentary was filmed.

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” did not need to show any deaths to make the documentary’s powerful points about the sacrifices and suffering that can result from standing up to an oppressive government. The movie doesn’t try to make Wine look like a political genius or superhero. Far from it: It’s a very real and meaningful portrait of a man who came from humble beginnings and rose to greatness for a cause that is much bigger than himself or his fame.

National Geographic Documentary Films released “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” in select U.S. cinemas on July 28, 2023. The movie premiered on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu on October 4, 2023. “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” was re-released in select U.S. cinemas on January 12 and February 16, 2024.

Review: ‘Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot,’ starring Matthew Holloway, Ricardo Flores, Enrique Flores, Juan Callan, Eva Pacohuanaco, Michelle Kosinski and John Q. Kelly

February 28, 2024

by Carla Hay

Joran van der Sloot in his 2010 mug shot after he was arrested for the murder of Stephany Flores in “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot”

Directed by Christopher Cassel

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Peru, Aruba, the United States and the Netherlands, the documentary film “Pathological” features a group of of white and Latin people representing the working-class and middle-class and discussing cases involving convicted murderer Joran van der Sloot.

Culture Clash: After being the main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of 18-year-old American tourist Natalee Holloway in Aruba, Dutch native Jordan van der Sloot (who spent most of his youth living in Aruba) takes Holloway’s loved ones, investigators and the media on “wild goose chases” about what happened to Holloway, even after he is convicted of murdering another young woman in Peru, in 2010. 

Culture Audience: “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in getting details of the horrible manipulations that van der Sloot inflicted on people behind the scenes in relation to his crimes.

An archival 2000s photo of siblings Matthew Holloway and Natalee Holloway in “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” is a well-researched documentary that ultimately doesn’t reveal anything new about this notorious murderer, but it does give a very insightful look at how he manipulated people. This documentary film can serve as a helpful way for people to look for warning signs in predatory criminals, in order to prevent becoming possible victims. “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” also shows how the media’s role in covering a famous crime can both hurt and harm the case.

Directed by Christopher Cassel, “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” was produced by NBC News Studios, which is why much of the archival footage comes from NBC News. Peacock (the streaming service distributing this documentary) and NBC both share the same parent company: NBCUniversal. However, this documentary has several exclusive, new interviews that give context and commentary about how certain events related to Joran van der Sloot. This documentary does not glorify him or make him look sympathetic.

Most people first heard about van der Sloot because he was the main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway (affectionally nicknamed “Hootie”), an 18-year-old American tourist from Alabama who had recently graduated from high school and was on vacation with several of her friends in Aruba. She had plans to be a pre-med student and had a full scholarship to attend the University of Alabama. The people who knew Natalee who are interviewed in the documentary—including her younger brother Matthew Holloway—describe her as a fun-loving and caring person. In the documentary, Matthew shares a heartbreaking memory of his father desperately searching for Natalee’s body with his bare hands at a garbage landfill in Aruba.

Joran van der Sloot, born in 1987 in the Netherlands, had immigrated with his family to Aruba in 1990. His father Paulus van der Sloot was a prominent attorney. His mother Anita van der Sloot was an art teacher. Joran had two younger brothers who were bullied by him, according to Lisa Pulitzer and Cole Thompson, co-authors of the 2011 non-fiction book “Portrait of Monster: Joran Van Der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery.” Pulitzer and Thompson, who are both interviewed in the documentary, say that long before Joran officially got into trouble with the law, he had a history of sexual harassment girls and women, as well as animal cruelty and pathological lying. At the time of Natalee’s disappearance, Joran was close to graduating from high school and had a tennis scholarship to attend St. Leo University in Florida.

That all changed on May 30, 2005, when Holloway was last seen by her friends in the early-morning hours when she left a Carlos’n Charlie’s bar in Oranjestad, Aruba. Witnesses say that she was a passenger in a car with three young men she met at the bar earlier that night: Joran and two friends: brothers Deepak Kalpoe (who was 21 at the time) and Satish Kalpoe (who was 18 at the time). Natalee had been scheduled to leave Aruba later that day but never showed up at her hotel after she was seen leaving in that car.

Over the next several weeks, all three men were arrested multiple times for suspicion over Natalee’s disappearance, but they were eventually released and were never charged because of lack of evidence. Joran’s first arrest in this case happened on the day of his high school graduation. Natalee’s divorced parents Beth Holloway and Dave Holloway were at the forefront in trying to find out what happened and get justice for Natalee. Her disappearance made the news worldwide.

Throughout the years, Joran kept changing his story about really happened the last time he saw Natalee, until he finally confessed in October 2023 that he had murdered Natalee on a beach. However, he has refused to say where her remains are. Although her body has never been found, many people had already believed for years that Natalee was dead due to foul play. (She was legally declared dead in 2012.) Several people in the documentary say that Joran’s father Paulus (who died of a heart attack in 2010) might have helped cover up the crime, or at the very least gave Joran legal advice on how to avoid being blamed for her disappearance.

On the fifth anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance (May 30, 2010), Joran murdered another beloved young woman with a promising future: 21-year-old Stefany Flores (birth name: Tatiana Flores Ramírez), who was a college student studying business. Her bludgeoned body was found in Joran’s room at the Hotel TAC, in Lima, Peru. Surveillance footage shows that she met Joran that night in a casino and went to his hotel room with him. That was the last time that anyone but the killer saw her alive.

After temporarily fleeing to Chile, Joran was arrested and extradited back to Peru, where he was convicted of this murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison. In January 2023, he was convicted of trafficking cocaine while in prison, and 18 years was added to his prison sentence. Joran is not interviewed in the documentary, and neither are his family members or any attorneys that he’s had.

Stefany’s father Ricardo Flores and her brother Enrique Flores are both interviewed in the documentary. Ricardo, who was a race car driver, describes Stephany has his constant race car companion and biggest. Ricardo says of Stephany’s death: “It’s a wound that never heals.”

A brief NBC News interview clip of Beth Holloway is shown at the end of the documentary, but she is not specifically interviewed for this movie. The interview took place after Joran’s public confession of killing Natalee. (He put the confession in writing.) Beth says in this interview clip that the pain of not knowing is worse than the pain of knowing what happened to Natalee. Matthew Holloway says that if he saw Joran in person: “I definitely want to talk to him, and I definitely want to whoop his ass. Which one will come first, I don’t know.”

The editing narrative of “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” goes back and forth between telling the story of Joran’s involvement in the Natalee Holloway case and the Stephany Flores case, instead of telling the story in chronological order. This is an effective way to show the disturbing parallels of how he was able to gain these women’s trust on the night that he met them and then lure them to be in a place where he could be alone with them.

Several people in the documentary say that Joran has a very charming side that masks his evil side, and he can easily fool people into thinking that he’s a “normal” person. He is also described by many people in the documentary as being a pathological liar and a gambling addict. There are other documentaries that have detailed his drug use, but this documentary doesn’t include information about Joran abusing drugs or being addicted to drugs.

Most of all, Joran has all the telltale signs of being a psychopath, say psychiatrists Abigail Marsh and Ayesha Ashai, who are interviewed in the documentary and are up front in saying that they have not evaluated Joran personally. Some of these telltale signs are his cold-blooded and methodical way in which he murdered Stephany Flores and covered up the crime; he doesn’t show empathy, remorse and the ability to take responsibility for wrongful actions that he caused; and his patholocigal lying. Even if the documentary had included an interview with Joran, he would probably tell a lot of lies in the interview.

Some of the people who were tricked by him include Beth Holloway, who were contacted by Joran in 2010, because he said he would tell them where Natalee’s body was if they paid him $250,000. The Holloways notified the FBI, which set up a sting operation for this extortion. The Holloways did not give Joran the full $250,000, but did give Joran about $30,000, which he used to go to Peru to gamble instead of going to a rehab facility in the Netherlands, which his mother had arranged for him. It was during this trip to Peru that Joran killed Stephany Flores.

John Q. Kelly, an attorney for Beth Holloway, says in the documentary he feels very guilty about his involvement in this extortion transaction that enabled Joran to traveled to Peru: “I felt I had blood on my hands.” Adding insult to injury: Until Joran was arrested for the murder, he was able to escape charges of extortion for years, because he once again recanted his statement about knowing what really happened to Natalee.

Stef Watts, a journalist who used to work for Fox News, is also interviewed in the documentary. Watts tells his story about how he was assigned to do a TV interview Joran van der Sloot in 2008, who said he would tell what happened to Natalee if he was paid $25,000. He says during the interview, Watts had to constantly remind himself that Joran was a master manipulator because Joran seemed so friendly at first, but Joran showed flashes of angry impatience over getting the money that he wanted.

After he was paid, Joran said that Natalee died from an accidental fall on a rock, and he hid her body. After the interview, he said it was all a lie, but Fox News aired the interview anyway with full disclosure that Fox News didn’t know what the truth was and had paid for an interview that Joran now says was a lie. It’s yet another example of how Joran was able to get away with something so heinous.

The most telling example of Joran’s more recent manipulations is the documentary’s interview with Eva Pacohuanaco, the Peruvian single mother who was arrested for helping Joran smuggle the cocaine that led to his conviction of drug trafficking. Pacohuanaco says that she met Joran when he was in prison for Stefany Flores’ murder, and she had an intense romance with him. At the time the interview took place, she there was a warrant for her arrest, and she was a fugitive hiding from the law.

Pacohuanaco describes meeting Joran van der Sloot at a vulnerable time in her life, after she was abandoned by the father of her son. On the day she met him she was at the prison with a friend, who was visiting another prisoner. She says she was immediately attracted to Joran because of his eyes. They began exchanging love letters soon after this meeting, and they became sexually intimate, which is allowed in the prison where he is at. She also shows her most-prized possession from the relationship: a keychain that has Joran’s name on one side and her name on the other side.

Even after finding out that Joran was in prison for murder, Pacohuanaco says of her relationship with him: “Joran was a refuge for me. Going into the prison, I felt calm, loved. He made me feel very special.” Joran told Pacohuanaco he was married but that he and his wife were getting divorced. (In 2014, Joran married a Peruvian woman named Leidy, who gave birth to their daughter. As of this writing, they are still legally married.) The documentary shows whether or not Pacohuanaco is still loyal and committed to Joran.

Other people interviewed in the documentary are Juan Callan, who is now retired but who was captain of the Peruvian National Police at the time of Joran’s 2010 arrest; Adeli Abad Marchena, the former Hotel TAC night clerk who found Stephany Flores’ body; and taxi driver brothers Williams Aparana and Oswaldo Aparana, who were unknowingly involved in driving fugitive Joran from the the Peruvian cities of Ica and Nacca, during Joran’s escape to Chile. The Aparana brothers say that Joran acted “normal” when he was their customer, and they had no idea at the time that he had just murdered someone or was running from the law.

Also interviewed are Natalee’s friends Jessica Caiola and Claire Fierman, who were with Natalee on that fateful trip in Aruba; Charles Croes, who was a liaison for Beth Holloway in Aruba; Benvinda de Sousa, a former attorney for the Holloway family; and former NBC News correspondent Michelle Kosinski, who covered the Natalee Holloway extensively during her time with NBC from 2005 to 2014. “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” is a no-frills and informative documentary that tells a straightforward story about many twisted lies of a murderer.

Peacock premiered “Pathological: The Lies of Joran van der Sloot” on February 27, 2024.

Review: ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer, starring Dave Kroupa, Nancy Raney, Jim Doty, Ryan Avis, Tony Kava, Amy Flora and Chris LeGrow

February 19, 2024

by Carla Hay

Dave Kroupa in “Lover, Stalker, Killer” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Lover, Stalker, Killer”

Directed by Sam Hobkinson

Culture Representation: Taking place in Nebraska and Iowa, the documentary film “Lover, Stalker, Killer” features an all-white group of people representing the working-class and middle-class discussing a case involving stalking and murder.

Culture Clash: A bachelor, who works as an automative employee, looks for love online and has the nightmarish experience of getting involved with a woman who stalked him and his loved ones and committed murder. 

Culture Audience: “Lover, Stalker, Killer” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries that have an uncluttered, cohesive storytelling style.

Dave Kroupa and Amy Flora (both in back row) with their two children in an undated archival photo from the 2000s in “Lover, Stalker, Killer” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Lover, Stalker, Killer” is a skillfully told true-crime documentary that keeps its perspective centered entirely on the victims, their loved ones and law enforcement. It’s a bizarre and fascinating case that doesn’t glorify the perpetrator. The perpetrator’s point of view isn’t really needed since there are no legitimate excuses for the heinous crimes committed in this case.

Directed by Sam Hobkinson, “Lover, Stalker, Killer” has an uncluttered, easy-to-follow style that is gripping from beginning to end, even if viewers already know the answers to the mystery and how the case ended after it went to trial. The documentary does not have interviews with the perpetrator, the perpetrator’s friends or family, or any defense attorneys. These omissions might irritate some viewers who want to know more about the perpetrator, but the more important takeaway from this documentary is how the survivors of these crimes coped with their ordeals and sought justice.

“Lover, Stalker, Killer” is told mainly from the perspective of Dave Kroupa, a longtime mechanic/automotive technician in Nebraska, who became one of the targets of a homicidal stalker. He is the main narrator of the documentary, which is formatted like a “whodunit mystery” to keep viewers in suspense if they don’t know the whole story. Kroupa’s online dating activities were the catalyst for the perpetrator to cause the murder and mayhem that damaged many people’s lives.

The problems started in 2012, when Kroupa had recently moved to Omaha, Nebraska, after a breakup with a former co-worker named Amy Flora, who was his live-in partner. Kroupa and Flora became a couple in 2000, and had two children (a son and a daughter) together. Flora and Kroupa both say in the documentary that their breakup was because they eventually grew apart.

Kroupa describes how his love life was in 2012 this way: “I was wild and free at 35, and I was determined to enjoy it.” He went on multiple dating websites, including Plenty of Fish, which is the only dating website mentioned in the documentary. Through these online dating sites, he met several women. Early on in his online dating experiences, he dated two women (both single mothers) around the same period of time. Both women were about the same age as Kroupa was at the time.

Kroupa says in the documentary that he made it clear to both women from the beginning that he didn’t want to be in a committed or monogamous relationship and he was only interested in casually dating them. He says that both women willingly agreed to this arrangement. Kroupa describes his relationships with both women as fun and compatible in the beginning.

The woman he dated first was Shanna “Liz” Golyar, who had a son and a daughter and owned a cleaning company in Omaha. When things started to cool down between Kroupa and Golyar, Kroupa began dating Cari Farver, an office worker with an interest in computers and who had a son. Farver lived in Macedonia, Iowa, but she worked in Omaha, near the automotive company where Kroupa had been working at the time.

Shortly after Kroupa began dating Farver (about two weeks), Golyar unexpectedly came over to Kroupa’s house to pick up something that she left behind. Kroupa and Farver happened to be on a date at Kroupa’s place at the time. Farver also sometimes stayed overnight at Kroupa’s home since it was close to her job. The two women were briefly introduced, and then Golyar left.

It wasn’t long after this incident when Kroupa began getting harassing messages by text and email from someone identifying herself as Farver. The messages would have insults and other derogatory remarks about Kroupa and Golyar. Kroupa ended the relationship with Farver, but the harassment escalated and eventually included stalking; arson of Golyar’s home; a break-in and burglary of Kroupa’s home; vandalism of Kroupa’s car and Golyar’s car; and violent threats to Kroupa, Golyar, Flora, and the children of Kroupa and Flora.

Meanwhile, Farver couldn’t be located after the harassment began, even when law enforcement did extensive stakeouts and investigations. Farver’s mother Nancy Raney (who is interviewed in the documentary) reported to law enforcement that she received messages by social media, email and text from someone identifying as Farver who was using Farver’s phone and accounts for email and social media. The messages said that Farver had taken a job (with an annual salary of $100,000) in Nebraska and that she didn’t want anyone looking for her. The messages also said that Farver expected her mother to look after Farver’s son.

Farver had bipolar disorder, but Raney insisted to investigators that this mental illness was not the reason why Farver disappeared. Raney also firmly believed that Farver was not doing the harassing and had a feeling that something bad must have happened to Farver, who would not willingly abandon her son. Raney reported Farver as a missing person to authorities, because Raney had not seen or spoken to her daughter by phone after getting these written-only messages.

The news media and investigators at the time could only point to Farver as the main suspect in the harassment, which continued over the course of three years. Farver still could not be located, and there was no proof that she was still alive. It’s at this point in the documentary that it’s easy to figure out who the culprit is and the real motives for these crimes.

By 2015, the case took a turn through the diligent efforts of three people working at the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office in Iowa: Jim Doty, a sergeant; his best friend Ryan Avis, an investigator; and Tony Kava, who worked in the information technology department. What’s even more remarkable is that Kava did most of his work while having a brain tumor, but he decided to delay having brain surgery until an arrest had been made in the case. Doty, Avis, and Kava are interviewed in the documentary to given an inside account of how they were able to solve the case.

Other people interviewed are Chris LeGrow (who was a detective at the time for the Omaha Police Department) and Brenda Beadle, a chief deputy at Douglas County Attorney’s Office in Nebraska. All of the interviewees in the documentary give their crucial views and their step-by-step process in this disturbing case. Ultimately, “Lover, Stalker, Killer” is a compelling story about how crime victims and law enforcement can work together to get justice.

Netflix premiered “Lover, Stalker, Killer” on February 9, 2024

Review: ‘Apolonia, Apolonia,’ starring Apolonia Sokol

January 14, 2024

by Carla Hay

Apolonia Sokol in “Apolonia, Apolonia” (Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Film)

“Apolonia, Apolonia”

Directed by Lea Glob

Some language in French, Danish and Italian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Filmed in Europe, the United States and Asia, from 2009 to 2022, the documentary film “Apolonia, Apolonia” features an all-white group of people discussing the life and career of French Danish painter artist Apolonia Sokol.

Culture Clash: Sokol has various struggles in her personal and professional lives, including occasional poverty, self-doubt, and difficulties breaking into the male-dominated art world to become a paid professional. 

Culture Audience: “Apolonia, Apolonia” will appeal primarily to people who are interested documentaries about struggling artists from a female perspective.

Apolonia Sokol in “Apolonia, Apolonia” (Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Film)

What does it really take to be an artist who struggles for years to get industry respect and professional wages? “Apolonia, Apolonia” gives viewers an insightful look at one such artist. Filmed between 2009 and 2022, this sprawling documentary is as much about painter artist Apolonia Sokol as it is about her friendship with director Lea Glob. These blurred lines sometimes give the film an uneven tone, but it’s still a fascinating watch.

“Apolonia, Apolonia” has its world premiere at the 2022 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Throughout 2023, the movie made the rounds at several film festivals, including the BFI London Film Festival and DOC NYC. “Apolonia, Apolonia” also made it on the shortlist for the 2024 Academy Awards in the category of Best Documentary Feature.

The movie opens with a scene taking place in Paris in 2013. Sokol is shown in front of a bathroom mirror as she cuts her bangs and wears shaving cream where a moustache and a “soul patch” would be on her face. It’s the first indication that that Sokol is an unusual person.

Glob who is the documentary’s narrator, explains in a voiceover in the beginning of the documentary the reason why she decided to devote so many years to chronicling the life of Sokol: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen the world through my camera. But no motif has caught my eye as she did.” Glob also says she began filming Sokol from the day that she met Sokol in Paris in 2009, on Sokol’s 26th birthday.

Sokol, who is the only child of her parents, was born in Paris in 1983 to unconventional, artistic parents. Sokol’s mother Aleksandra Tlolka was a Polish immigrant whose parents were displaced under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Sokol’s father Hervé Breuil was a native of France. Long before social media existed, Tlolka and Breuil filmed themselves and their lives, which they kept archived on videotapes for Sokol watch as she grew up.

One video that her parents didn’t want her to see until she turned 18 was the sex video that her parents made that showed her being conceived. Snippets of some of these archived videos are shown in “Apolonia, Apolonia,” including the video of Sokol being born. It’s an example of how Sokol was literally born to be on camera. Her parents raised her among “artists, dissidents and activists” and continued to film their lives.

At the age of 8, Sokol’s life changed when her parents split up. Because her father’s name, not her mother’s name, was on the lease for the family home, Tlolka found herself and Sokol homeless when Tlolka moved out and took Sokol with her. They eventually found a place to live, but living in poverty had a profound effect on Sokol. Tlolka and Sokol moved to Denmark, where Sokol spent the rest of her childhood and part of her young adulthood

Years later, in 2009, the documentary shows Sokol once again on the verge of homelessness. She had moved back to Paris to live with in the Chateau Rouge area, a working-class neighborhood, in a ramshackle art theater called Lavoir Moderne Parisien, which used to be a laundromat. Her parents, although no longer a romantic couple, were business partners in the theater, which was on the verge of shutting down because the business was losing too much money. The parents were selling furniture and appliances in the building in an effort to raise money.

It was under these grim circumstances that Sokol met Glob, who gives her own personal background on what led her to become a filmmaker. Glob says that as a child, her grandfather was a painter artist who would pay her one euro and hour to let him paint her portrait. Instead of becoming interested in painting, Glob says she became interested in filmmaking.

While in film school, Glob was assigned to do a documentary about someone. She heard about an unusual aspiring painter who grew up in an art theater in Paris and who “wanted to walk in the footsteps of the great painters.” That aspiring painter was Sokol.

The documentary gives a raw and often intimate look at the highs, lows and everything in between in Sokol’s quest to become a professional artist. Sokol, whose specialty is painting portraits of people, experiences many expected roadblocks and uphill battles, including sexism, her own self-doubt, and trying to get gallery showings of her work without an agent.

Sokol’s journey takes her to various cities other than Paris, such as Copenhagen, New York City, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Rome. She enrolls in the elite École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. When Sokol moves to Copenhagen, she has mixed feelings about returning to Denmark. Just like her mother, Sokol says that she feels more comfortable as an artist in Paris.

Things take an interesting turn when Sokol moves to Los Angeles and gets investment money, use of an art studio, and encouragement from art benefactor Stefan Simchowitz, who is introduced to Sokol by Sokol’s friend Isabelle Le Normand. Emmy-winning writer/producer Mike White (of HBO’s “The White Lotus”) makes a random appearance in the movie when Le Normand introduces him to Sokol.

At one point in the conversation with White, Sokol mentions that she and Simchowitz will be meeting with Harvey Weinstein. (This particular footage was obviously filmed before disgraced entertainment mogul Weinstein’s scandalous downfall in 2017.) The meeting with Weinstein is not mentioned again in the documentary.

Simchowitz becomes Sokol’s mentor, but there’s something a little “off” about this mentorship, because Simchowitz seems to be the type of investor to seek out young, attractive female artists and show them off like arm candy. When he and Sokol are at an event together, an eager young female artist approaches Simchowitz asks if her remembers her. Their conversation is brief and polite but slightly awkward. You can almost hear the other woman thinking about Simchowitz: “So this is your latest pretty young protégée.”

Sokol is completely financially dependent on Simchowitz during her stay in Los Angeles. He gives her constructive advice and introduces her to important people in the art world. But the underlying question that astute viewers will have but isn’t said out loud in the documentary is, “What does Simchowitz really want out of his relationship with Sokol?”

Sokol presents herself as a free spirit who doesn’t have any hangups about nudity in her art or by being naked herself on camera. Later, during her stay in Los Angeles, she spontaneously takes off all of her clothes and posing next to giant inflatable butt plug at an outdoor art exhibit, even though she risked getting arrested for indecent exposure.

For a while, Sokol seems caught up in the glitz and glamour of the Los Angeles art scene. She also gets an important gallery exhibit (with Simchowitz’s help) and learns the importance of having the right connections. But then, the movie shows her back in Copehagen again. What happened to Simchowitz and his enthusiastic support? The documentary never goes into details, so it can easily be assumed that Sokol and Simchowitz parted under uncomfortable circumstances that Glob chose not to put in the documentary.

That’s not the only information void in “Apolonia, Apolonia.” The movie takes a harrowing turn when Glob turns the camera on her own personal life, when she documents her recovery from a near-death experience that left her in a coma while she was pregnant and had to undergo an emergency C-section. Fortunately, her baby son Luca was born healthy and unharmed. Her recovery took months, but the documentary never gives details on what caused Glob’s serious injuries.

Sokol’s personal life also goes through a series of ups and downs. During the hardest times of her struggling artist years, her roommate and best friend was Oksana Shachko (born in 1987), an artist who was a refugee from Ukraine. In Paris, Sokol and Shachko were part of a tight-knit circle of feminists who supported each other and practiced left-wing politics. However, throughout their friendship Sokol expresses concern for Shachko’s mental health, because Sokol thinks Shachko has depression and anorexia.

Because “Apolonia, Apolonia” is primarily focused on Sokol as an artist, her love life doesn’t get much screen time. Early in the movie, a boyfriend named Max Lanos Plaquer breaks up with her o camera when she’s living in Paris. After much moving around in different countries, Sokol is seen with another boyfriend in Paris. At one point in the movie, Sokol and Shachko both say that they don’t want to have children.

As for Sokol as an artist, judging her talent is subjective, and she constantly grapples with her own insecurities and how other people perceive her. The documentary has some lingering shots of Sokol starting a painting and then showing the finished art, but the movie doesn’t take much time to explore how and why Sokol chooses the people whose portraits she paints. The people in her paintings are not interviewed either.

Despite the questions that remain unanswered by “Apolonia, Apolonia,” the documentary is a very compelling story of commitment to being an artist when facing much resistance, criticism and adversity. It’s a career where the odds are stacked against most people to get enough financial rewards to become full-time, professional artists. Sokol is the type of artist who doesn’t have a “backup plan” to switch careers if things get too tough for her. “Apolonia, Apolonia” shows the pain and tragedy as well as joy and hope during this 13-year period of Sokol’s life, which is not the kind of life that a lot of people would want to have, but it’s a life lived authentically.

Grasshopper Film released “Apolonia, Apolonia” in New York City on January 12, 2024. The movie was released in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Spain in 2023. Documentary+ will premiere “Apolonia, Apolonia” on a date to be announced.

Review: ‘Occupied City,’ a historical documentary of Nazi-controlled Amsterdam, narrated by Melanie Hyams

January 11, 2023

by Carla Hay

A street procession in “Occupied City” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Occupied City”

Directed by Steve McQueen

Culture Representation: Filmed in Amsterdam, in 2020 and 2021, the documentary film “Occupied City” features a predominantly white group of people (with some black people and Asians) of various social classes in cinéma vérité footage.

Culture Clash: The documentary visits locations and tells (through a narrator) what each location was like in Nazi-controlled Amsterdam from 1940 to 1945, to contrast with what the location looked like at the time the documentary was filmed in the early 2020s. 

Culture Audience: “Occupied City” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in Holocaust-themed documentaries, but viewers will either like or dislike the bloated runtime and the movie’s bland textbook style.

A family at a bar mitzvah ceremony in “Occupied City” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Occupied City” is tedious and repetitive, due to this documentary’s excessively long runtime (nearly 4.5 hours) and pretentiousness. It’s like being stuck in a rambling academic lecture with travelogue visuals. It’s also an endurance test to stay awake. Most people who watch this entire movie probably won’t remember many of the overload of facts that this movie soullessly spews out like an artificial-intelligence machine on autopilot. It’s why the total runtime of “Occupied City” is not justified at all, because most of the movie will be quickly forgotten because of its mind-numbing monotony.

Directed by Steve McQueen, “Occupied City” is based on Bianca Stigter’s 2019 non-fiction book “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945),” a location guide to historical locations of Amsterdam when the city was controlled by Nazis. McQueen and Stigter, who are romantic partners in real life, are two of the producers of “Occupied City,” which had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The movie is like the cinematic version of an oversized atlas with narration that sounds like it’s from a very stodgy textbook. No one in the 2020s footage is interviewed. Everyone who’s seen talking in the movie is not identified at all.

The problem with “Occupied City” is it looks like the filmmakers decided to just film the locations and have a narrator read excerpts from Stigter’s book, with no further insights that a great documentary would have. The movie also shows some footage without narration that looks like something a tourist would film when the tourist doesn’t know what to film. It looks like extraneous footage that director McQueen couldn’t bear to edit out of a documentary that desperately needed better film editing to keep viewers fully engaged.

The narrator for “Occupied City” is actress Melanie Hyams, who has the plodding task of reading factoids about the approximately 130 locations shown in “Occupied City.” Hyams, who is British, reads the script in a tone that is borderline robotic. Most people who know World War II history also know about the horrors of the Holocaust, but the way that these facts are delivered in “Occupied City” really diminish the impact of this history. The visuals focus on mundane life in Amsterdam, while the real people who suffered during the Holocaust are reduced to detached and dull sentences recited in narration.

Want to know where was the first Amsterdam pub that was supposedly the first in the city to ban Jewish people? “Occupied City” will show you that where the pub used to be is now a non-descript G-Star office or factory, which the documentary filmed from the outside. In the narration, Hyams says a few things about the antisemitic rules posted in the pub. And then concludes the short summary of the location by saying what happened to this antisemitic pub: “demolished.” (Expect to hear the word “demolished” a lot in this documentary.)

“Occupied City” gives very brief summaries of some of the atrocities that took place in each location during any year between 1940 to 1945. Whether it’s the Rijksmuseum, a kindergarten classroom, or a brothel in the 2020s, the documentary will tell viewers what types of Nazi-related activities took place in those locations during those Nazi-controlled 1940s years. Because there is no archival footage in “Occupied City,” there are no “before” and “after” photos or images of these locations. And that deliberate omission isn’t necessarily a flaw.

But what’s missing from “Occupied City” is any real effort to get viewers to remember the human stories of the people who were part of this history. Their photos are never shown. Their descendants are not interviewed. Instead, viewers who watch “Occupied City” are more likely to remember how much the documentary shows lingering footage of how Amsterdam was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, or footage of left-wing political rallies where people rant against fascism and environmental corruption.

And really, it isn’t all that surprising when “Occupied City” tells you that the current town squares in Amsterdam that existed during the Nazi occupation were used for Nazi rallies back then. It isn’t shocking that many of the houses where Amsterdam residents currently live used to be the houses of Nazi officials or persecuted Jewish people. But these are the types of facts that “Occupied City” repeats over and over, as if it’s uncovering groundbreaking information. Ironically, the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam is given only a few short minutes in “Occupied City,” probably because the museum is so much more informative than this puffed-up documentary that thinks it’s more important than it really is.

The obvious intention of “Occupied City” is to show how life has continued in Amsterdam, with many people seemingly blissfully unaware that the very spaces they are enjoying are the same spaces where brutal antisemitism and other evil bigotry occurred. For example, there’s a fairly long scene filmed during an unknown month in a 2020s winter, showing children and their families ice sledding in an outdoor space where Jewish people used to be rounded up and abused by Nazis. Another example is the documentary showing two women having a love partnership ceremony at the same location where there used to be a Jewish bookstore whose books were destroyed by Nazis.

But when “Occupied City” shows these “everyday happy life” scenes with narration of dark and depressing Holocaust facts, it’s with the unspoken and condescending tone that maybe these people being filmed don’t know or don’t care about these facts. But because “Occupied City” doesn’t bother to interview anyone for this documentary, the fact is that viewers just don’t know how much history about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is known or cared about by the people being filmed. The movie ends in a very predictable way: by showing an interracial family whose son is having a bar mitzvah ceremony, which is the type of footage that Nazis would hate.

“Occupied City” is a long-winded documentary about locations and random footage of anonymous people in those locations, not a well-rounded story about people (past and present) who are part of the history that this documentary attempts to tell. Stigter’s Holocaust-themed 2022 documentary “Three Minutes—A Lengthening” (whose centerpiece was long-lost, three-minute footage of Polish residents in 1938) made the most of out of this short footage to create a meaningful feature-length documentary. Unfortunately, “Occupied City” does the opposite: It does very little with the overabundance of location footage in this overstuffed documentary that drains the humanity from the people affected by this very human history.

A24 released “Occupied City” in select U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2023.

Review: ‘Bitconned,’ starring Ray Trapani, Nathaniel Popper, Jacob Rensel, Kerri Hagner and Robert Farkas

January 1, 2024

by Carla Hay

A 2017 photo of Sam Sharma, Raymond “Ray” Trapani and Robert Farkas in “Bitconned” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Bitconned”

Directed by Bryan Storkel

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Bitconned” features an almost all-white group of people (with one Latin person) talking about their connection to Centra Tech, a Miami-based cryptocurrency company that turned out to be a scam that swindled millions of dollars out of its victims.

Culture Clash: The Centra Tech leaders took advantage of an unregulated cryptocurrency industry to commit widespread fraud. 

Culture Audience: “Bitconned” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries that explore the dark sides of technology and finance.

Raymond “Ray” Trapani in “Bitconned” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

The documentary “Bitconned” takes a riveting look at the cryptocurrency con artists behind the scam company Centra Tech. The story will leave many viewers feeling repulsed by the outcomes of these crimes. The film editing heightens the absorbing narrative.

Directed by Bryan Storkel, “Bitconned” is the type of documentary that—thanks to some clever editing—leads viewers on a seemingly straightforward path that doesn’t reveal its first big twist surprise until the movie is about halfway over. For people who don’t know all the details before seeing “Bitconned,” it will feel like one outrageous reveal after another by the second half of the movie. “Bitconned” has some re-enactments, but the vast majority of the story is told through interviews given exclusively for the documentary.

“Bitconned” begins by showing the most controversial person interviewed for the documentary: Raymond “Ray” Trapani, one of the co-founders of Centra Tech. He’s seen getting fitted for a designer suit by two tailors while surrounded by mirrors and answering interview questions. It’s quite apt that Trapani is surrounded by mirrors in the movie’s very first scene, because the documentary shows him to be (by his own admission) an unapologetic narcissist.

Trapani and people who know him well repeatedly say in the documentary that ever since he was a kid, he wanted to be a millionaire criminal. He says in the opening scene: “I don’t mind being looked at as a criminal, really. It’s tough. I was doing crimes my whole life—scamming, shit like that.”

He adds, “Times have changed. It’s not that easy to work hard and buy a house. Nowadays, you’ve got to figure out some sort of way to finesse the system. That’s the modern-day American Dream.”

Of course, anyone with common sense can see that housing affordability is a very fake excuse to go into a life of crime. Trapani makes it clear that he decided from a very young age that he wanted to get rich quick through illegal ways. He can’t blame it on things like a housing market being less affordable than it was in previous decades.

When he’s asked how much money Centra Tech scammed, Trapani smirks when replying, “On paper: $32 million. But in reality, we made a few hundred million.” And this is what Trapani says when he’s asked if he would do the same thing all over again: “I would take the risk.”

Trapani (who grew up in Atlantic Beach, New York) first got into major trouble with the law as a teenager in the late 2000s/early 2010s, when he and a close friend named Andrew Aguirre sold prescription painkillers that they got through fake prescriptions. Aguirre, who is interviewed in the documentary, says that he and Trapani were full-blown drug addicts (OxyContin was their drug of choice) during their crime spree. Aguirre describes how Trapani was in their teenage years: “He was trying to be someone from the streets, but he’s not from the streets.”

Trapani actually grew up in a middle-class household, where he and his two brothers were raised by a single mother. Trapani describes his absentee father, who left the family, as “a fucking loser.” The names of Trapani’s father and brothers are not mentioned in the documentary, nor are these three men interviewed.

However, Trapani’s mother Kerri Hagner and her mother Ann Hagner are interviewed. (They are his only family members to be interviewed for the documentary.) Kerri is more willing than Ann to admit knowledge of Trapani’s criminal ways, but Kerri is fiercely protective of him. Kerri is seen on camera essentially threatening the filmmakers that there will be “trouble” if the documentary makes her son look bad. Anyone who sees how Trapani brags about his crimes will know that he’s the one who makes himself look the worst.

Trapani and other people interviewed say that Kerri’s father William “Pop” Hagner (who died of cancer in 2018, at the age of 79) had a tremendous influence on Trapani, who relocated to Miami as a young adult. This grandfather was not only like a father figure to Trapani, but he was also the first investor (reportedly investing $500,000 as seed money) in Trapani’s company Miami Exotics, which was a business that rented luxury cars. Trapani liked to give people the impression that his grandfather was a mafia boss, but Kerri says her father was actually a hard-working man in the elevator-making business.

Bert Feldman, a former friend of Trapani’s, co-founded Miami Exotics and gives details in the documentary about what it was like to work with Trapani and what ruined their friendship. One of the less scathing remarks that Feldman has to say about Trapani is: “He’s always been fascinated with money. He’s obsessed with it. It’s his one true love.”

Another business partner in Miami Exotics was Sam “Shorbee” Sharma, who was an enemy of Trapani’s when they were high school. However, Sharma and Trapani ended up working together as adults because they both shared an obsession with getting rick quick, and they needed each other’s different skills in this partnership. Trapani says that Sharma was good at working on technical details, while Trapani says his own skills were about coming up with business concepts and networking with business colleagues. And although Sharma is not interviewed in “Bitconned,” it’s obvious that their real skills were in being con artists.

Miami Exotics ended up being a disastrously failed business, where Feldman was ousted before things were at their worst with Miami Exotics. Trapani says in the documentary that many of his family members invested in the business, so the success or failure of the business was very personal to him. It’s easy to know why Miami Exotics flamed out, even before the details are talked about in the documentary. Various people blame each other for the demise of Miami Exotics, but it’s obvious that it wasn’t the fault of just one person.

Trapani says it was Sharma’s idea to start a cryptocurrency company in 2017, due to Bitcoin being a hot commodity at the time. And that’s how Centra Tech was born, with Trapani as chief operating officer and Sharma as chief technology officer. Centra Tech claimed to be a company that made bank-affiliated debit cards for cryptocurrency, but it was all a scam.

One of the many lies that Centra Tech told to lure investors was that it was working with Visa on these debit cards. Centra Tech also had LinkedIn accounts with fake work experiences and fabricated academic credentials for Trapani, Sharma and other company executives who went along with the lies.

As an example of Centra Tech’s “fake it ’til you make” it way of doing business, the company’s chief financial officer was hired not because he had a background in finance but because he was the brother of Sharma’s girlfriend. (The girlfriend is not interviewed in the documentary.) Centra Tech’s CFO was Robert Farkas, who describes Sharma as a “genius.”

By contrast, Farkas has almost nothing good to say about Trapani, whom he describes as a mostly incompetent drug addict who spent more time partying, gambling and spending money than doing work. “I don’t remember Ray contributing much of anything,” Farkas says in the documentary. “He had a little mafioso vibe. He loved gambling, and he loved money. And the whole time, he was medicated.”

New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper, who wrote a pivotal article in 2017 on Centra Tech, says he was intrigued by the cryptocurrency industry because it was filled with “get rich quick” stories, but the truth was much different. “There were scams and frauds everywhere … Centra Tech was the archetype of what went wrong with cryptocurrency.”

Other people interviewed in “Bitconned” include former Centra Tech Jacob Rensel; former Centra Tech developers Martin Pejkov and Filip Burcevek; University of Manitoba professor Andrew Halayko, who has a bizarre connection to the story; a man with the name Jonny B Good, who describes himself as Tapani’s best friend; Securites and Exchange Commission investigator Robert Cohen; federal prosecutor Samson “Sam” Enzer; and attorney Paul Petruzzi.

Although there are obvious villains in “Bitconned,” the documentary also puts a lot of blame on “get rich quick” greed that lures gullible investors into these scams. Rensel admits that he had this type of greed when he decided to invest in Centra Trech, and ths greed blnded him to some warning signs that eventually became too big to ignore. The movie also shows fake images on the Internet and celebrity endorsements can also play a role in getting people to think a scam is legitimate.

Some viewers of “Bitconned” won’t like that two of the former Centra Tech leaders are given so much screen time in this documentary. Farkas tries to portray himself as a victim of Trapani, who openly gloats about the crimes he committed. And the documentary could have used more perspectives from people who survived Centra Tech scams. However, “Bitconned” does not glorify the criminals and exposes them for what they are and how they were able to commit these crimes. It’s the best type of cautionary tale that can help educate people on how not to get fooled by these types of con artists.

Netflix premiered “Bitconned” on January 1, 2024.

Review: ‘Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare,’ starring Debbie Cartisano, Lance Jaggar, Chris Smith, Sharon Fuqua and Charles Brofman

December 29, 2023

by Carla Hay

An archival Challenger Foundation photo from “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare”

Directed by Liza Williams

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” features an almost all-white group of people (with one Asian person) talking about their experiences with controversial entrepreneur Steve Cartisano and the high-priced “wilderness therapy” camps that he founded for troubled juveniles.

Culture Clash: Cartisano, who died of a heart attack in 2019, at the age of 63, was sued several times and had many allegations that his camps illegally abused the children who were forced to be there. 

Culture Audience: “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries that show how abuse and exploitation are excused or covered up, but some questions remain unanswered by the end of the movie.

An archival photo of Debbie Cartisano and Steve Cartisano from “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” succeeds in being a cautionary documentary about the dangers of boot camps that claim to be “tough love” rehab for juvenile delinquents. But the movie needed better investigative journalism about the sexual abuse allegations mentioned near the end. Sensitive viewers, be warned: This documentary is disturbing in its details of child abuse. It’s also the type of documentary that will be infuriating to anyone who thinks the perpetrators exploited the system to get away with horrible acts of violence and other crimes.

Directed by Liza Williams, “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” begins with an awkward mention of celebrity socialite Paris Hilton going public in 2020 about experiencing physical and emotional abuse at various group facilities that she was sent to when she was a “wild child” teenager. At the beginning and end of the documentary, there’s archival footage of a 2021 press conference where Hilton and Ro Khanna (a U.S. Representative from California) made statements, after a congressional hearing to introduce a bill to protect children from abuse in group facilities. After showing this footage in the beginning, the documentary mentions that the documentary actually isn’t about Hilton’s experiences but about the “wilderness therapy” camps founded by Steve Cartisano, who is considered to be the “godfather” of this controversial way of dealing with troubled kids. (In 2019, when he was 63, Cartisano died of a heart attack while he had cancer.)

The mention of Hilton is the documentary’s way of saying that if this abuse could happen to a wealthy heiress, it can happen to anyone. However, it comes across as just using a celebrity name to hook people into watching the movie. The fact of the matter is that “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” is about the types of experiences where children were isolated and deprived of food and bathroom facilities for long periods of time and forced to do strenuous physical activities outdoors in extreme weather conditions. This not the same type of abuse that Hilton said she experienced at a boarding school such as Provo Canyon School in Utah, where she says she was treated like an indoor prisoner and deprived of sunlight for long periods of time.

“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” places much of the blame for “wildnerness therapy” camps on Cartisano, who is considered to be the first person to take this concept and market it into a business that can generate millions of revenue every year. These camps do not operate like juvenile detention facilities, where kids are sent by the court system. These camps have the kids’ parents or legal guardians sign over the right for the kids to be forcibly taken to these camps, with the intent of punishing the kids enough to scare them out of their troublemaking ways.

Cartisano was a former U.S. Air Force instructor and military special forces officer who had a troubled childhood himself. As mentioned in the documentary, his biological parents gave him up for adoption, and then took him back when he was 2 years old. His biological mother was a heroin addict who died when he was 17. His biological father was reportedly physically abusive.

“Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” has horrific stories from survivors of programs founded by Cartisano, who was mostly based in Utah. And even though he was sued and faced numerous allegations of child abuse in these programs, he would just shut down a program when it had too many legal problems and then start a new business under a different name and in a different location. According to the documentary, rather than toning down the extreme methods used in each program, Cartisano made each subsequent program worse than its predecessor.

First, there was the Challenger Foundation, which Cartisano founded in 1988. The Challenger Foundation sent kids to an isolated area in Utah and made them go on 500-mile hikes to get food. The children were also deprived of bathroom facilities and indoor sleeping quarters. The Challenger Foundation’s biggest controversy was the death of Kristen Chase, a 16-year-old who died in 1990, after she hiked a long distance in extreme heat while enrolled in the Challenger Foundation. Chase’s tragic passing resulted in a wrongful-death lawsuit, whose outcome is detailed in the documentary.

Legal and financial problems led to the demise of the Challenger Foundation, but that didn’t stop Cartisano from being in the “child reform” business. In the early 1990s, he moved on to founding HealthCare America, based in St. Thomas and later in Costa Rica. Instead of making the kids hike in a Utah desert, the kids had to live in harsh conditions on sailboats that went to various places in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Pacific Coast Academy, based in Samoa, was Cartisano’s business in the 2000s. He often used the alias Steve Michaels during his Pacific Coast Academy years. Pacific Coast Academy had plans to build a massive facility and used many of the kids in the program as unpaid and untrained workers to do the construction. Critics of Cartisano say that he intentionally misled desperate parents into thinking that the kids enrolled in his programs would be in a safe and healthy environment.

The Challenger Foundation had a 63-day program, but people interviewed in the documentary say that it was not unusual for kids enrolled in the program to stay longer than 63 days if they were being “punished” for not complying with the rules. Other kids stayed longer than 63 days, simply because their parents didn’t want them to come home after the 63 days. Of course, there was an obvious incentive for the camps to extend the enrollment: more money could be made from the people paying to have the kids at the camp.

The documentary makes it clear that it’s not a coincidence that after the scandals that Cartisano had in the United States, he took his operations to countries or territories that had less restrictive laws about the type of business that he was doing. “Hell Camp” also has stories of how Cartisano’s employees would dodge authorities who would investigate complaints about Cartisano’s businesses. A disclaimer at the end of the documentary mentions that any businesses that currently have the names Challenger Foundation, HealthCare America and Pacific Coast Academy have nothing to do with companies founded by Cartisano.

Several survivors of Cartisano’s “hell camps” are interviewed in the documentary. The survivors are identified by their first names only, but their faces and voices are undisguised. The survivors who are interviewed were sent to Cartisano’s camps as teenagers, usually ages 13 to 16. Almost all of them say that the reasons they were sent to the camp were because they had drug problems. Some enrollees had other issues too, such as committing petty crimes, skipping school, or running away from home.

All of them describe experiencing physical abuse from Cartisano’s employees, including assaults, lack of medical care for injuries, food deprivation, sleep deprivation, and basic hygiene deprivation. And they say there was constant verbal and emotional abuse. All of them also say that they’ve had long-term trauma from these terrible experiences.

Challenger Foundation survivors interviewed in the documentary are Nadine, who was in the program in 1989, at the age of 15; a woman named Kinney, who was in the program in 1988, at the age of 13; and Matthew, who was in the program in 1990, at age 15. HealthCare America survivors interviewed are Adam, who was in the program in 1993, at the age of 13; and Ashley, who was in the program in 1993, at the age of 15.

The Pacific Coast Academy survivors who are interviewed are Kurt, who was in the program in 2000, at age 15; and Amber, who was in the program in 2000, at the age of 14. Kurt and Amber knew each other as friendly acquaintances before being in the program, but that all changed when Kurt and other teens in the program were ordered to torture some of the enrollees, including Amber. Kurt admits to it in the documentary, but he says he was just following orders and was too afraid to say no.

Adam’s stoic father Larry is also interviewed and doesn’t seem to have much regret about sending Adam to the HealthCare America program, although he does get a little emotional when he watches an old video of him making a surprise visit to a sobbing Adam in Costa Rica. Larry also says he didn’t know how brutally Adam was treated until it was too late. Larry is one of two parents of a camp survivor to be interviewed in the documentary.

By contrast, Matthew’s mother Kari expresses regret about putting him in the Challenger Foundation program. She remembers thinking at the time about the Challenger Foundation: “I didn’t know what else to do, but this sounds good.” Sharon Fuqua, who sued Cartisano for the wrongful death of her daughter Kristen Chase, is also interviewed, along with Fuqua’s son David, who is Kristen’s younger brother.

Cartisano’s family members and close associates who are interviewed in the documentary don’t really deny the abuse, but they go out of their way to downplay his responsibility in being the leader of a business that enabled or encouraged the abuse. His ex-wife Debbie Cartisano is the one who does the most to push the narrative that Steve was a “good guy” who “meant well” with these programs, but the way his employees behaved was “beyond his control” when he wasn’t at the camps. She also seems more interested in talking about the financial hardships that she had to go through every time Steve had shut down another one of his businesses, rather than Debbie acknowledging any suffering that any child victims experienced because of those businesses.

Also interviewed are Debbie and Steve’s daughter Catie, who openly talks about her troubled teen years of drug addiction and how she recovered from it. Her brother Dave also had the same problems and was sent to Pacific Coast Academy. (He is not interviewed in the documentary, which mentions what happened to Dave.)

Catie says in the documentary: “My dad was brilliant.” But she admits that the scandals and controversies took a toll on the family, and she wanted him to change careers: “I wanted him to do something different. I wanted our family to be normal.” Debbie also says that she wanted Steve to get out of the “child reform” business, but he refused.

The only former Cartisano camp employee interviewed in the documentary is Lance “Horsehair” Jaggar, who says that he immediately bonded with Steve because they were both veterans of the U.S. Air Force. Jaggar is unapologetic about the harsh tactics that were used on the children at these camps. Jaggar says that he doesn’t believe in beatings as punishment, but he thinks spankings are perfectly acceptable. The documentary has archival footage of Jaggar yelling insults at some of the Challenger Foundation kids. You get the feeling that whatever was on camera was very tame compared to what wasn’t on camera.

Jaggar makes this not-very-believable comment about how the kids were treated in these camps: “We broke them down, but we didn’t break them down to hurt them. We didn’t break them down to punish them. We broke them down to get rid of the old crap and help them be a better and more positive person.”

He adds with a sadistic smirk, “Some of the kids were so scared, they’d almost pass out. And that was fine by me. I wanted them to have a little fear. [For] a lot of these kids, this was it, or they were going to jail.”

Also interviewed in the documentary are reporter Chris Smith, who investigated and did news reports of Cartisano camp operations and scandals; attorney Charles Brofman, who represented Steve in several lawsuits; Max Jackson, former sheriff of Utah’s Kane County; and a former U.S. Embassy worker who is only identified by her first name: Mary Lou. The documentary includes a lot of archival footage, such as news reports, interviews that Steve did, and grainy-looking video recordings that were taken at the camps.

Although there is a variety of people interviewed for the documentary, what’s missing is more investigation into the sexual abuse allegations that aren’t mentioned until the last 20 minutes of the movie. Amber says she was sexually abused by a “chief of the village” during her time at Pacific Coast Academy, but the documentary doesn’t mention if the filmmakers followed up on this allegation to try to find this accused abuser to get his side of the story.

And there’s another sexual abuse allegation against someone else that isn’t too surprising, but this allegation is shown so late in the film, it seems like it was mainly put there for shock purposes. The documentary does not give any indication if this allegation is isolated or possibly the tip of the iceberg. If the allegation against this person is true, it’s highly likely that there are many more victims of the same type of sexual abuse, but the “Hell Camp” filmmakers didn’t seem to want to do more investigating.

Even with some noticeable flaws, “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” is a searing look at this unsettling fact: Even when so many people speak their truths about being abused, there are still others who deny or excuse the abuse. This documentary is also a wake-up call about why these types of programs are thriving in a society that should have better ways of dealing with child delinquency. Of course, there are no easy answers, but it should be easy to know when discipline crosses the line into unacceptable and illegal abuse.

Netflix premiered “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare” on December 27, 2023.

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