Capturing the Friedmans

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 2003, 107 min
Section: Forum of Independents

Synopsis

In 1987, in Great Neck, Long Island. Arnold Friedman, a retired schoolteacher in his fifties  and his 18-year-old son Jesse are arrested and charged with committing repeated acts of sexual abuse on boys who attended the father’s computer classes in their basement. Until then the Friedmans were a typical, upper-middleclass Jewish family: a father, a mother and three sons. From that moment their world is instantly transformed. With their Great Neck community in an uproar, the family undergoes a media onslaught. Given access to their old home movies and family videos, Jarecki constructs his film as an investigation, but our expectations are constantly subverted. The film delves not just into the life of a family but also into a community, a legal system, and an era. By constantly changing perspectives and keeping the audience’s judgments and understanding in flux, Capturing the Friedmans embodies the difficulty of capturing the truth.

About the director

Andrew Jarecki (b. 1963) is a graduate of Princeton University (1985) and resides with his family in New York. He produced the short film Swimming, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and also won the Focus Film Award. He is also a musician. Capturing the Friedmans, Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary, is Jarecki’s first feature-length film.