American Combatant

Fred White feels guilty about the death of his sister Maud, twenty years earlier. The circumstances were dark and violent, and – according to Fred – linked to 9/11. Divorced, unemployed, drunk and plagued by anxiety and a need to do penance, he hires a film student to record his testimony and his quest. Libin makes clever use of part of the feature film he made in 1988 entitled The Distribution of Lead, in which we see a bunch of white-collar revolutionaries on the eve of Black Monday, after a failed coup at their firm in the World Trade Center, as they force their way into Fred’s sister’s apartment. There, a game of cat and mouse ensues that Libin edits back-to-front in his film while we follow Fred’s odyssey through Lower Manhattan in the present. The result is an effective and topical film about a time that is plagued by paranoia, politics and distorted idealism. Filmfestival Rotterdam 2007