Reality Winner was a US Air Force vet and NSA employee whose leaking of an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, which subsequently handed it over to the FBI in a bungled, source-disclosing attempt to verify it wasn’t a hoax, in turn led to her arrest. The saga has been well-documented, to say the least: Just this year, Tina Satter premiered her Sydney Sweeney-starring HBO film Reality, adapted from the playwright’s IS THIS A ROOM: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription. Now we have Sonia Kennebeck’s Reality Winner, itself an extension of the 25 New Faces alum’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 12, 2023Tina Satter’s Reality opens with a high-angle shot of its eponymous heroine, Reality Winner, her blonde head poking up amongst a stretch of cubicle dividers in a Georgia NSA facility. It’s 2017 and above her on the walls are an array of television monitors, chyrons blaring, all tuned to the latest news about James Comey’s Congressional testimony regarding Russian election interference. The channel is Fox, and you don’t have to be at any particular place on the political spectrum to view this work environment as already an abusive one. Winner works translating Farsi to English, a task that requires sensitivity, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 20, 2023