(T)ERROR
There is a particular movement in Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s exceptional “(T)ERROR,” which will make everyone in the audience sit up instantly, having their bodies betray them with shock. I just wish I could watch it in a cinema to see that moment for myself. This film was executive produces by Eugene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”) and Nick Fraser (“Man on Wire”), is fascinating in its own right and brings to mind “Citizenfour” due to the way in which it takes apart government failure and the various components of terrorism that go beyond what we see.
“(T)ERROR” was birthed when movie maker Cabral realized that her friend from her Harlem neighborhood, Saeed “Shariff” Torres, was an FBI informant. How did she get this information? It was him who told her about his acts. He even allowed filming of the next assignment he went on as a witness. Shariff falls into the category of hundreds of part time FBI informants who are recruited by the government to infiltrate terrorists, gather intelligence about their plans and eventually arrest them.
They are not like professional agents because they can move closer to people, make friends with them until they find themselves having betrayed them later on during investigations or trials hence putting into consideration human nature, entrapment seems real when working class people are paid to build cases by governments. Besides he has stated severally what his future holds regarding his need for survival such as opening up a bakery indicating that this will be his last job.
The latest task given to Shariff involves getting close to some Taliban sympathizer suspect guy. We do not learn much about why this person is believed to be an enemy except for some Facebook posts, rumors as well as assumption that Shariff does not know what FBI knows concerning this matter (We do not hear anything from FBI except through text messages between Shariff and his superiors telling him how to deal with a “POI” person of interest).
We witness Shariff’s attempts at building friendship with the POI even though he admits that there is nothing they have in common. We see him trying to get paid from the FBI for what he does. Then things start becoming confusing.
Cabral and Sutcliffe disclose that Shariff was involved in a major case years before, one which resulted in the conviction of a musician called Tarik Shah on charges of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. He has been in jail since 2007. Shah’s mother talks about her son’s relationship with Shariff as well as how he ended up being jailed. To put it simply, there are some unanswered questions about what really happened here if at all we believe anything that takes place in “(T)ERROR.” At minimum one should be skeptical concerning an internecine war posed as a threat by a paid informer who shares discussions with his friend only.
In a spell of about thirty minutes, “(T)ERROR” is an intriguing character-driven study of a man with an interesting story to tell. Having probably known the majority of the people living in his neighborhood, Shariff is an active and exciting guy. Moreover, if you take him and FBI at their word, he is among those trying to stop another 9/11 from happening.
The story should have been just that alone but “(T)ERROR” takes a new twist in its second act which makes the whole piece richer and Cabral and Sutcliffe do not look back from there painting a picture of system that is at best flawed, at worse corrupt and totally damaged. Like Laura Poitras with “Citizenfour,” they choose to let it tell itself with only grim figures being added right at the end. According to reports, once they had made an hour-long production for PBS about a Muslim teenager who was falsely charged with being a suicide bomber Sutcliffe got engaged.
In order to find solace away from our terrors after 9/11 all of us did it. However this fear has led to situations like those captured by the movie (T)Error which seems dismally necessary when one realizes that just because we haven’t been attacked does not mean we are winning this war.
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