American Animals

Bart Layton

USA, 2018, 116 minutes

 In 2004, at Transylvania University in Kentucky, four students watch heist movies to learn how to pull off a robbery of rare books worth more than $5 million. What may seem like a college prank at first turns out to be an act driven by a profound desire to give some meaning to the students’ uneventful middle-class lives. Director Bart Layton (The Imposter) creates a cutting-edge blend of documentary and fiction techniques that wowed audiences at the Sundance festival this year. Parallel to the actors who play the characters, the actual participants, now out of prison, are interviewed on camera talking perceptively about their experiences as if they had been in a coma of self-delusion the whole time. The result is a profound examination of what lost young men with a lust for life, dreams of recognition, and no moral compass are drawn to do.—Miguel Pendás