Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall is one novel feminist take on a familiar tabloid topic. Erin Lee Carr’s latest two-part doc for HBO (both Part One: The Crime and Part Two: The Punishment air March 8 here in the US) actually treads the same true crime territory as Tobias Lindholm’s six-part (also on HBO) series The Investigation. (As well as Emma Sullivan’s 2020 Sundance-debuting, Netflix-shelved documentary Into the Deep for that matter.) But where Lindholm chose a cold laser focus on facts in his narrative account of this stranger than fiction tale, Carr does quite the opposite – using her journalistic skills to bring the emotional fallout from Wall’s shocking demise to the fore. And to celebrate a woman whose own journo talents made a woefully under-appreciated difference in the world.
Relatively safe?
Carr’s title, of course, refers to the globetrotting Swedish freelancer (for The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, Slate, Time, and more) who went missing while working on her latest dispatch back in 2017. Which, as tragic as that may be, wouldn’t necessarily have been all that unusual for the recipient of a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grant. What is peculiar is that Wall disappeared in safe and sound Denmark – in a bay not all that far from bustling Dear reader. To continue reading, please create your free account with your email,
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