BFI London Film Festival: (T)error

BFI London Film Festival: 238 films. From 71 countries. 16 cinemas. 12 days. One Festival.

Lyric R Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s documentary began as a portrait of Saeed ‘Shariff’ Torres, an ex-convict with a colourful past who makes a living as an informant for the FBI. A close-quarters view of this troubled, charismatic middle-aged loner, the film sees Shariff encouraged by his unseen handler to befriend Khalifah Al-Akili, a young Pittsburgh man with a habit of posting views in support of extreme Islamic groups on social media. But when Kalifah airs his suspicions that he’s the victim of entrapment, the filmmakers reach out to him and, unbeknown to Shariff and his FBI superiors, start to tell his side of the story. Charting this elaborate, sometimes bleakly comic inept game of cat-and-mouse, this is a compelling and unsettling expose of the murkier side of US law enforcement in the ongoing ‘war against terror’.

(Notes by Edward Lawrenson)

(T)error, dir. Lyric R Cabral, USA 2015, 83 mins.