(Excerpts)
……
Documentary Feature: Casting JonBenét
The sensational, decades-old case of the 6-year-old beauty queen found murdered in her family’s home on Christmas night in 1996 is a popular subject for filmmakers looking to capitalize on the current taste for "true crime" documentaries and docudramas. But Casting JonBenét pulls off something much more interesting, and much more relevant to 2017’s celebrity and sensation-soaked America: It focuses on the people of Boulder, Colorado, where the murder took place, and the ways the relentless media coverage of the crime affected their lives.
Netflix's Casting JonBenet isn't a true crime story. It's something better.
Director Kitty Green put out a casting call in the Boulder area, inviting people to audition for any role in the story of the Ramsey case. Once they arrived on her set, Green explained that the casting material would be used in the film — that anything they said on camera during the auditions might end up in the final cut, so they should be careful about what they say.
Most of the film comes from these audition tapes, and the result serves to argue that the way we think and talk about sensationalized crime cases is deeply influenced by our own experiences. Casting JonBenét calls into question the real possibility of ever arriving at something like the "truth"; the film isn’t trying to teach us about history, but instead to make us see the present in new ways. —AW
……
From:
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2017/9/4/16227742/oscar-nominations-2017-picks?__twitter_impression=true&from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0