Catfish

I watched this film at the London Film Festival, and have been dying to post a review about it ever since. Now its general release date is looming in the UK, I thought it was time I gave my opinion on this fine documentary about social networking via the internet.

I have been recommending this film to nearly every person I come into contact with, for two simple reasons, it is highly entertaining and an extremely relevant, thought provoking documentary. It follows Nev Schulman's life in New York and online as he builds up a relationship with a young girl and her family via Facebook. I didn't read anything about this film before I went to see it and I am pretty grateful for that. The element of surprise and intrigue drew me into the film and kept me glued to my seat with anticipation. A light-hearted beginning that introduced you to the upbeat world of Nev and his friends and family soon took a dark turn that weaved into a story I wasn't expecting. With a whole plethora of emotions in tow, happiness, delight, fear and sadness it kept my attention throughout.

Sure, there are questions about how linear the filming process was, and I did start to question this about a week after seeing the film. But I was still thinking about the film for a long time after I actually viewed it, which speaks for itself. A good documentary should certainly get you thinking and questioning and I spent the entire train journey home talking about how I would deal with certain situations and dilemmas brought up in the film that (in my opinion) were dealt with in a graceful and sensitive nature by the filmmakers.

Facebook has quite simply changed the way my generation interact with each other and Catfish steers you to tread the path of cautiousness when starting an online relationship. I don’t want to give away anything more about this film as it may spoil your viewing pleasure. All I will say is if you use any internet social networking tools you will probably have an opinion on how and why this documentary is having such an impact on its audience.

The reason I left it a while to post my review is that this film has made it into my top ten films of 2010. A feature that will be posted in the next couple of weeks.
Catfish is on general release in the UK on 17th December 2010, let me know what you think of it...