WHAT?
As the real identity of ‘Amina’ was revealed to the world, Bagaria realised she’d been hoaxed, and her concern was replaced with humiliation and pain. Sophie Deraspe was her friend at the time. She explains the sense of unreality: “It really felt as if we were in a movie, like we were part of a thriller and my friend was at the centre of it. She was exposed to the media and her love affair was everywhere.” Deraspe understood that a great story was unfolding but also that her friend was particularly vulnerable. Several months later, it was Bagaria that approached her, wanting to share what had happened. Given total access to her computer, the director combed through months of communication. “We found it all, even the chats that people don’t realise is archived in their computers somewhere,” Deraspe recalls. “I knew that I had a lot of information, but I also knew right from the beginning that the themes that could be addressed were more important than how the hoax took place.”
WHY?
Deraspe thought Bagaria should meet the other key people who had been taken in, from journalists to non-imaginary Syrian activists. She explains: “It was important for Sandra to know that she wasn’t alone. She was the only one hurt in such an intimate way but she wasn’t the only one fooled. All of them were very bright and educated, just like her. They weren’t naïve people caught in some stupid hoax.”
Beyond interviewing those who had been involved, both felt there was one more figure that Bagaria needed to speak to in order to reclaim agency: Tom MacMaster, the married American man who had spent five years pretending he was a gay Syrian woman called Amina. Deraspe reflects on the film’s most suspenseful scene: “Meeting with him was something Sandra had to do, not just so the viewer could form their own opinion of the guy, but for closure. It was therapeutic for her to meet him on her own terms and in her own way. It was something very satisfying: she was the one in power, at last.”
