The Imposter (2012 film)
| The Imposter | |
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| Directed by | Bart Layton |
| Produced by | Dimitri Doganis |
| Music by | Anne Nikitin |
| Cinematography | Erik Alexander Wilson Lynda Hall |
| Edited by | Andrew Hulme |
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| Distributed by |
Picturehouse Entertainment Revolver Entertainment Indomina Releasing |
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Release date
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Running time
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99 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1,999,277 |
The Imposter is a 2012 British-American documentary film about the 1997 case of the French confidence trickster Frédéric Bourdin, who impersonated Nicholas Barclay, a Texas boy who disappeared at the age of 13 in 1994. The film was directed by Bart Layton. It includes interviews with Bourdin and members of Barclay's family, as well as archive television news footage and reenacted dramatic sequences.
Bourdin, who turned out to have a long record of impersonating various children, real or imaginary, embellished his claim to be Nicholas Barclay by alleging that he had been kidnapped for purposes of sexual abuse by Mexican, European, and U.S. military personnel and transported from Texas to Spain. His impersonation fooled several officials in Spain and the U.S., and he was apparently accepted by many of Barclay's family members, even though he was seven years older than Barclay, spoke with a French accent, and had brown eyes and dark hair rather than Barclay's blue eyes and blonde hair. The impersonation was eventually discovered as a result of the suspicions of a private investigator, Charles (Charlie) Parker, and an FBI agent, Nancy Fisher. Bourdin subsequently made a full confession, and in the film he elaborates on the various stages in his impersonation.
Layton said of Bourdin: "He invites sympathy. He has this childlike quality about him, and he can be very charming. And at other times he can be quite repellent, because he can be remorseless and you're reminded about what he did. So as a filmmaker, I was asking, How can I find a way of getting the audience to experience a bit of that?"
The film has received almost universal critical acclaim and has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 95%. The film received the Grand Jury's Knight Documentary Competition at the 2012 Miami International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Grand Jury's World Cinema - Documentary prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It won the Filmmakers Award at the 2012 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. The film has been in official selection for several international film festivals, including South by Southwest,Edinburgh International Film Festival,True/False Film Festival,New Zealand International Film Festivals,Sydney Film Festival,Revelation Perth International Film Festival,Seattle International Film Festival, and San Sebastián International Film Festival.
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