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Reviews Counted:31
Fresh:28
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: A thrilling and complex documentary about an international con-artist that's as confounded with the distinction between truth and lies as its wildly believable (and equally untrustworthy) subject.
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Education/General Interest
Theatrical Release:Apr 3, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: Roxie Releasing is proud to present the US theatrical release of Forbidden Lie$, a documentary by Anna Broinowski. Winner of numerous prizes, including two Australian Film Critics Awards, two... [More]
Director, Anna Broinowski, and her illusive subject, the scheming best-selling author Nancy Khouri, are locked in a cat and mouse game, but you're never quite sure who's playing which role. Their compelling competition of wits turns this documentary into
Forbidden Lie$, a Möbius strip of a documentary, weaves in and out of its protagonist’s story to the point of exhaustion -- but the ride is thrilling and intermittently jaw-dropping.
Khouri's transparency is stunning and so is this flashy documentary, delivering an astounding, enraging story of literary deception and moral bankruptcy that's thrilling to watch.
Forbidden Lies, a documentary by Anna Broinowski, records, fascinatingly but with far too much slick finesse, Norma's world-class con artistry.
...provides a clear-eyed perspective of a charismatic con artist weaving a spell of deception with every word she utters.
A revelation: it's one of the few recent documentaries that actually uses the cinematic form as part of its substance.
This is the way documentaries should be made: with dramatic recreations when clarity and entertainment can be augmented.
Brilliant.
One of the year's best films.
it's hard not to feel by the end of this film that one is looking into the giggling face of evil.
It's a compelling story with a deathly serious topic, treated in a near sideshow manner. I like it. Less factual than a doc, less fiction than a drama. Faction
Forbidden Lie$ holds our attention with Khouri's increasingly brazen and unrepentant insistence that she's the only voice of truth in a violent world.
Even after you've seen Forbidden Lie$, the dizzying, drop-dead fascinating documentary on Norma Khouri, you won't be absolutely sure if she's on the level or a con artist ranked as "one of the best ever." That's how good she is.
Top CriticLike 2003's "Shattered Glass" this film is a story of one of the best scandals ever. A well done documentary and valuable opportunity to see how good a con-artist can be.
By the doc’s end, how much of what Norma says is fact or fiction doesn’t matter as much as the entertaining, infuriating journey that Norma (and Broinowski) has taken us on.
Cool-headed, lighthearted and outrageously entertaining, Forbidden Lie$ is documentary-as-striptease.
Top CriticA chilling, edge-of-your-seat expose' that puts you face-to-face for two hours with the embodiment of pure evil.
Captivating, provocative and more sensationally thrilling than your average documentary.
Thankfully, both filmmaker and subject approach the film as a duel. Broinowski thrusts, Khouri parries. Finding out what, if anything, is true about Khouri's story is simply the Macguffin for a filmmaker more thrilled by the hunt.
As unusual, even sensational, images appear, it becomes clear that Forbidden Lie$'s more conventional images are also up for challenges, that they can no longer be assumed to be true.
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