Snap

Year: 2010
Country: IRELAND
Run Time: 85 minutes

It's a parent's worst nightmare: your toddler is snatched in a public park. It's another parent's worst nightmare: your teenager is the one who abducts the toddler. SNAP is both an intense drama about a family in denial and a visual tour de force. Following the media circus around the revelation that her 15-year-old son Stephen has taken a child to his Granddad's house for several days, caustic Sandra launches a bitter tirade against the media and the furious public. Her rant is captured by a hand-held camera. Meanwhile, the film relates the shocking events that may have led Stephen to take the child. Director Carmel Winters and director of photography Kate McCullough look at this horrendously dysfunctional mother-son pair from different distances, using various recording technologies-CCTV, mobile phone, webcam, documentary cameras, mini DV, Cine 8-to see how they reveal themselves. As they're being examined, the characters start looking back: while Sandra courts the camera's attention, Stephen gets behind it. SNAP asks whether it's possible to differentiate between "mediated" reality and supposedly "objective" reality. This isn't easy, since nothing in life – or this film – is black and white. –B.B.

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