Sydney Sweeney stars as a real life whistleblower in director Tina Satter’s upcoming drama Reality.
Sweeney stars in the film as Reality Winner, who pleaded guilty after her arrest in June 2017 for leaking a US intelligence report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The HBO Films project reaches streaming service Max on May 29 after premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year.
With a script by Satter and James Paul Dallas, the film adapts the transcript of Winner’s FBI interrogation. Satter previously staged the transcript as a play Is this a roomwhich spawned a Broadway run in 2021. Reality’The cast includes Marchant Davis and Josh Hamilton.
The suspenseful trailer shows Winner, a former enlisted member of the United States Air Force, being interrogated at her home in Georgia. “I’m trying to bet,” Sweeney says in the footage. “I am not trying to be a whistleblower. Thats crazy.”
In his review of Reality for The Hollywood Reporterlead film critic David Rooney praised Sweeney’s “remarkable performance in the title role”, in addition to Satter’s “unwavering command of the medium”.
During a recent interview with THRthe Euphoria actress explained her hopes about how the movie would affect the perception of Winner: “I think the movie has such a unique approach in telling the story of Reality in such an emotional and human way, and I hope that instead from reducing her to just a headline, or interpreting the matter through a partisan lens, this film can provide a window into what this woman experienced that day and what she had to endure for her own decisions.
