Catfish

Young New York photographer Nev Schulman lives with his brother Ariel and friend Henry Joost in New York. Abby Pierce, an eight-year-old child prodigy artist in rural Michigan, sends him a painting of one of his photographs. They become Facebook friends in a network that broadens to Abby's family, including her mother, Angela; Angela's husband; and Abby's attractive older half-sister Megan, a songwriter.
For a documentary, Ariel and Henry film Nev as he begins a long-distance relationship with Megan, conducted over the Internet and phone calls, and they discuss meeting in person. She sends him MP3s of her songs, but Nev discovers that they are all taken from live performances on YouTube. He later finds evidence that Megan and Abby have made other false claims.
Ariel urges his upset brother to continue the relationship for the documentary. The siblings and Henry eventually travel to Michigan to make an impromptu appearance at the Pierces house and confront Megan. They discover that the person behind all these Facebook personae is Angela, in reality a housewife who cares for two disabled stepsons in addition to Abby. Although Angela's husband exists, Megan doesn't live with them, had been in an alcoholism rehab clinic for the last few months and has nothing to do with her equivalent in Facebook. The trio also finds out that Abby is not a child prodigy, and she even cares little for painting or drawing altogether. Angela is the artist behind the paintings. She also had created Megan and quite a few of her Facebook friends as sockpuppets to support the whole fiction, which her family knows nothing about.
It is shown in the film that Angela seems to have fabricated these fictional people on Facebook as a way to escape how her life turned out and the regrets that came with sacrifices she had to make in order to have a family and a stable life. As the film progresses towards the end, Angela's life around the house and interactions with her family are shown.

ANMELDELSE

Fake eller real?

Filmen udstiller de sårbarheder vi har ude i pixeluniverset, hvor intet er som det ser ud til. Vi er blevet så vante  til den elektroniske motorvej og de informationer den skovler med sig, at vi uden at blinke ofte tager de visuelle billeder for værende sandheden.
Catfish udstiller denne sårbarhed og rejser igen, for det er ikke nyt, spørgsmålet om vi er for ukritiske til de medier vi omgiver os med.

Filmen kan virke en smule "sløv".. altså at tempoet ikke holder dig fast, men spørgsmålet "hvorfor" udgør så udemærket kilden til spænding.

Filmen er altså hverken genial eller tilbyder nye vinkler, men den er til gengæld overbevisende.

Tilbage står spørgsmålet,.. er det så virkelighed eller er hele produktionen sat op fra start af? - Der synes at være mange delte meninger rundt om.

En ting er sikkert.. filmens tema/handling samt selve filmen rejser begge spørgsmålet/debatten... "kildekritik".

Genialt.

Skal denne film ses i biografen?..........................Nej!.. desværre udkommer den kun på dvd.