“We Offered to Bear Witness”: Sonia Kennebeck on Reality Winner

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 2021 doc United States vs. Reality Winner, which is basically an earlier version released specifically to bring attention to the inhumane prison conditions the whistleblower was facing at the time. So, it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that during Winner’s first pre-trial hearing, Kennebeck (no stranger to the whistleblower’s plight, having directed 2016’s National Bird) was one of only a handful of journalists that even bothered to show up. Though she then became the only one the family trusted enough to stick around with a camera for the surreal drama of the next five years. Just prior to the doc’s NYC debut (October 11th at IFC Center) Filmmaker caught up with Kennebeck to learn all about Reality Winner—and the process of bringing Reality back to a more nuanced reality for the big screen.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.