About the Film
Major News on Adrian Thomas case: Case Update
Home Video now available as a digital rental. DVD for educational institutions also available.
“SCENES OF A CRIME” explores a nearly 10-hour interrogation that culminates in a disputed confession, and an intense, high-profile child murder trial in New York state.
The AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION and the AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION have each recognized SCENES OF A CRIME in their annual lists of “outstanding” works.
The New York Times says, “This smart, cool-headed film, which has a ‘Rashomon’-like vision of the case, presents a disturbing picture of courtroom justice.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan says, “If you watch ‘Scenes of a Crime’ — and you very much should — be prepared to be outraged. A cool documentary that makes the blood boil, it examines how people can be psychologically manipulated into confessing.”
Variety called the film “absorbing and provocative.”
The film won an IFP Gotham Independent Film Award (“Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You”), won the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC in the “Viewfinders” section.
Police video-recordings allow directors Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock to unravel the complicated psychological dynamic between detectives in Troy, New York and their suspect, Adrian Thomas, during a long interrogation.
Detectives, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the suspect himself offer conflicting accounts of exactly what happened in this mysterious and disturbing true-crime documentary.