La niña de la foto

When a young woman's body is found in Oklahoma, her identity is a fake one, her story, harrowing.

I'm a little late watching this, I was a little put off by the long running time, being so used to hour long documentaries, it was a big mistake, this was compelling viewing, the time flew by.

I think this is one of those stories that will love with me for some time, it's thought provoking, remarkable and chilling, what they poor young woman endured will quite literally break your heart. Nobody should have to suffer, ensure and experience what she did, she also seemed such a wonderful person.

Very well made and edited, it flowed incredibly well. This really was a triumph, a story that needed to be told.

9/10.

It's a really disturbing story and you will lose faith in humanity if you watch it. And if you believe in God, you will question your beliefs on that too.

Yet the girl was admirable, to get a full scholarship to a top engineering program despite dealing with so much abuse.

Society failed her. If somebody at some point had intervened and asked the right questions and spoken to the law enforcement, she could have been saved.

Full credit to FBI for pursuing the case till the end. Teen pregnancies should be actively discouraged. If you cannot support your kids or give them a good life, please don't have kids. The mother is the real criminal here. She had no business having 3 kids living in a trailer and highly irresponsible marrying a stranger she just met. She should be jailed with the psychopath.

Who was Michael's father? DNA testing ruled out Warren Hughes. Who was Megan's father? It seems odd if Sharon was never allowed much freedom that she could have had 2 pregnancies by other men.

The documentary starts off as a typical hit-and-run case, eventually branching out into a spiral of unending twists and hidden mysteries. While it spends the entirety of the first act on the perpetrator and his doings, director Skye Borgman ensures that the piece lends ample time on unraveling the mystery around the titular girl's identity. That's when the documentary comes into its own, never letting us forget that it's not the inhumanity meted out to the victim that she needs to be remembered for, but for who she was, as a person (friend, peer, mother). Skye wants to tell us that even under the most difficult circumstances, the victim was always trying to be her best version. The final stretch is incredibly moving, especially when we get to know of more people related to her, and what she meant (or still means) to each of them.

This is an utterly awful story and that is what makes it captivating. I didn't think the film itself was anything remarkable and am perplexed at the reviews that mark it out as a different way of presenting a real life tragedy. The film was well done and it did spend time trying to bring things together to give the subject respect and a sense of closure for the family but if I am honest I think that is a mechanism for making the voyeurism of this kind of film palatable.

It was not in and of itself a remarkable bit of film making.

I enjoy documentaries and am fascinated mainly by what motivates these crimes, how we can spot clues to these kind of behaviour etc but I am more than a little concerned that Netflix seems to be becoming known for glamourising this genre, reading reviews of how amazing it was left me wondering if we are so detached from the fact that it is real we are becoming numb to real life horror and are we getting used to dining out on other peoples misery?