6. The Imposter
There's something not quite right about Frederic Bourdin. His eyes sparkle with deception. His jaw is too tight. When he speaks, he's disturbing and repellent, yet somehow strangely hypnotic. This man acts as the subject for the compelling documentary by Bart Layton entitled The Imposter, a bizarre tale of stolen identity and bone-chilling mystery. Bourdin is a self-confessed confidence trickster, who back in 1997 assumed the identity of missing American boy Nicolas Barclay. Despite Bourdin evidently looking and sounding different to Nicolas, the Barclay family openly accepted him as being their long-lost son. Although public feeling was initially euphoric at the result of a missing child resurfacing, something didn't quite add up, and it wasn't long before people began to ask questions. The Imposter audaciously leaves countless threads hanging which is enough to drive you nuts; but it is in its refusal to give definite answers that the film succeeds. It zeroes in on one of life's most unsettling facets: uncertainty. Nobody knows the real story of what happened to Nicolas Barclay, and The Imposter refuses to give us the answer, instead exposing the unsettling nature of an incredible turn of events to allow for an engrossing, puzzling, and positively chilling documentary.