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The Imposter

Stars: Adam O’Brian, Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Anna Ruben | Directed by Bart Layton

I was sorry to have missed The Imposter in the cinema last year, so I was very glad to get the chance the chance to cover the DVD review. As you may be aware, The Imposter is a documentary about Frédéric Bourdin, a French conman who impersonated Nicholas Barclay, a Texan teenager who had been missing for three years. The film is comprised of interviews with Bourdin, Barclay’s family and authorities involved with the case, as well as dramatic reconstructions of key events in the story.

Although the events portrayed by the film are all matters of fact, it’s easy to use words such as ‘story’ and ‘plot’ to describe it given how similar it is to a tightly wound potboiler thriller. As well as the Frederick Forsyth-style intricacies of the intrigue,...

Indomina Releasing has finally granted The Imposter a DVD release, and it's coming at us sooner rather than later. Look for the flick in stores and on various VOD platforms beginning on January 22, 2013!

The film, directed by Bart Layton, stars Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Bruce Perry, and Philip French. No word on any special features.

Synopsis

A gripping thriller straight out of real life, The Imposter is an original film experience that walks the razor's edge between true-crime documentary and stylish noir mystery. The twisting, turning tale begins with an unsettling disappearance--that of Nicholas Barclay, a 13-year-old Texas boy who vanishes without a trace. Three and a half years later, staggering news arrives: The boy has been found, thousands of miles from home in Spain, saying he survived a mind-boggling ordeal of kidnap and torture by shadowy captors. His family is ecstatic...

This is the Pure Movies review of The Imposter by Michael Holder. The film is directed by Bart Layton and produced by Poppy Dixon and Dimitri Doganis. The film stars Frederic Bourdin, Adam O'Brian, Carey Gibson and Anna Ruben. Truth is stranger than fiction, as Lord Byron once wrote. But fiction was invented because, most of the time, truth is either too boring or painful. So on the odd occasion when truth is actually very, very strange indeed, it’s destined to be made into a feature film at a single shake of a lamb’s tale. Thus, when documentary-maker Bart Layton stumbled upon this fascinating story of a Frenchman who in 1997 convinced a Texan family he was their missing 16-year-old son Nicolas Barclay, he could probably scarcely believe his luck that no one had documented the story on film before.

The Imposter (15)

(Bart Layton, 2012, UK) Frédéric Bourdin, Charlie Parker, Carey Gibson. 99 mins.

Documentaries don't come much stranger than this. The film begins with the discovery in Spain in 1997 of a 16-year-old boy. Could this really be Nicholas Barclay, who went missing aged 13 from his home in San Antonio, Texas? Well, no. Nicholas's family welcomed this "boy" into their home without realising that he was in fact a 23-year-old French-Algerian master of deception named Frédéric Bourdin. Then things got really weird.

Shadow Dancer (15)

(James Marsh, 2012, UK/Ire) Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Aidan Gillen, Gillian Anderson. 102 mins.

An embittered mother dedicated to the Ira struggle is forced to turn informer by MI5. This stark and suspenseful thriller returns documentary-maker Marsh to scripted drama after Man On Wire and Project Nim.

The Watch (15)

(Akiva Schaffer, 2012, Us) Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mel Rodriguez. 102 mins.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop...

The Imposter

Directed by Bart Layton

United Kingdom, 2012

Your mind play tricks on you all the time. You’re presented with a clear-cut fact, something that is immutably true, and you doubt it. You wake up in the middle of the night, but your mind convinces you that you’ve had a full night’s sleep or it’s actually mid-morning and you’re running late. Someone you care about hasn’t answered your call, so your mind tells you something terrible—a car accident, maybe—has happened to them, even if the real answer is they just didn’t pick up their phone. Why does anyone—and we all do it–play these games on their psyches? What compels us to believe a convenient lie as opposed to accepting the cold, harsh truth? Such heady questions are at the center of The Imposter, a high-intensity and thrilling new documentary.

Third poster for Bart Layton's The Imposter. "The greatest mystery in the disappearance of Nicolas Barclay is the day he came home" This is one film I am super-keen to see. With such a plot (read below the poster), it's impossible not to be intrigued. The documentary opened on July 13th via Indomina Releasing, with people in the mix including Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Bruce Perry and Philip French. Synopsis: "There Are Two Sides To Every Lie" A gripping thriller straight out of real life, The Imposter is an original film experience that walks the razor's edge between true-crime documentary and stylish noir mystery. The twisting, turning tale begins with an unsettling disappearance--that of Nicholas Barclay, a 13 year-old Texas boy who vanishes without a trace. Three and a half years later, staggering news arrives: the boy has been found, thousands of miles from home in Spain,...

Third poster for Bart Layton's The Imposter. "The greatest mystery in the disappearance of Nicolas Barclay is the day he came home" This is one film I am super-keen to see. With such a plot (read below the poster), it's impossible not to be intrigued. The documentary opened on July 13th via Indomina Releasing, with people in the mix including Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Bruce Perry and Philip French. Synopsis: "There Are Two Sides To Every Lie" A gripping thriller straight out of real life, The Imposter is an original film experience that walks the razor's edge between true-crime documentary and stylish noir mystery. The twisting, turning tale begins with an unsettling disappearance--that of Nicholas Barclay, a 13 year-old Texas boy who vanishes without a trace. Three and a half years later, staggering news arrives: the boy has been found, thousands of miles from home in Spain,...

The Imposter Indomina Releasing Director: Bart Layton Cast: Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide, Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Bruce Perry, Philip French, Adam O’Brian, Anna Ruben, Cathy Dresbach, Alan Teichman, Ivan Villanueva, Maria Jesus Hoyos Screened at: A&E, NYC, 7/3/12 Opens: July 13, 2012 Admit it: You’ve sometimes imagined what it would seem to be like someone else; to have Bill Gates’s money, President Obama’s prestige, Tom Cruise’s popularity, Brad Pitt’s looks, Angelina Jolie’s lips. But how often have you wished to actually Be someone else? There are precedents. in Daniel Vigne’s movie “The Return of Martin Guerre,” a man leaves his family and friends for the war [ Read More ]...

There are rules you're supposed to follow when you make a documentary.

Bart Layton just happens to think they're ridiculous.

"There's this idea of documentary purity that is not terribly realistic," says the British director, whose debut feature, "The Imposter," sails into limited release this weekend on the strength of a 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating (at press time). "I think everyone who's ever picked up a camera or sat in an edit suite will be aware that there are lots of subjective decisions being made. This idea that you can create a film that is purely objective, it's just not a realistic ideology."

Layton's film tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Frédéric Bourdin, a charming young congenital liar who in 1997 persuaded authorities on two continents that he was Nicholas Barclay, a Texas boy who had gone missing three years earlier at age 13. Somehow, even Barclay's family fell for his act, taking him...

Check out the trailer for Indomina's The Imposter, directed by Bart Layton, starring Frédéric Bourdin, Carey Gibson and Beverly Dollarhide This is one eerie-looking film! A masterfully-made trailer will really get you both interested and spooked at the story (below) of the film which opens July 13th, and also includes Charlie Parker, Nancy Fisher, Bryan Gibson, Bruce Perry and Philip French. "There Are Two Sides To Every Lie" A gripping thriller straight out of real life, The Imposter is an original film experience that walks the razor's edge between true-crime documentary and stylish noir mystery. The twisting, turning tale begins with an unsettling disappearance--that of Nicholas Barclay, a 13 year-old Texas boy who vanishes without a trace. Three and a half years later, staggering news arrives: the boy has been found, thousands of miles from home in Spain, saying he survived a mind-boggling ordeal of kidnap and torture by shadowy captors.