Untrustworthy Images, Disguised Fictions: Kitty Green's 'Casting JonBenet'

The 1996 murder of child-pageant star JonBenét Ramsey occupies a significant place in the American cultural imagination, particularly for those who reside in Boulder, Colorado. Ostensibly recording the audition process for a film about the crime, Australian director Kitty Green seizes on the local actors' personal attachments to the event to examine our fascination with suffering and scandals – ultimately creating a work that blurs documentary and drama, fact and fabrication, writes Jesse Thompson.

Additional keywords:
hybrid, docudrama, dramatisation, trauma, memory, parochialism.