This book presents an authoritative analysis of a selection of important international hybrid documentaries. The hybrid documentary is a term the author proposes for film and television texts that utilize strategies of conscious mediation and fiction and nonfiction to reimagine trauma, crisis and political violence through reenactment. The analysis presents new and profound insights into the complex discussions on truth and artifice in a technological age. A deeply thoughtful, well researched book that I highly recommend.

Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies, The University of Portsmouth, UK

Fabrizio Cilento's Reenactment persuasively follows what he calls the “Möbius strip of fiction and nonfiction,” where discussion of documentary evidence, fictional reconstruction, political trauma, and mediated memory continually turn into one another. Particularly compelling is his reading of three Romanian films where, by treating them as peak achievements of New Romanian Cinema, Cilento demonstrates how the fall of communism – while obsessively documented – remains profoundly misunderstood. Along with the other chapters, devoted to Cold War Echoes, and followed by equally rich discussions of Post-Truth Realities, Cilento offers his original take on the peculiar interdependence of myths and dire realities in cinematic representations of history.

Christina Stojanova, Editor of The New Romanian Cinema (2019), Canada

Reenactment is breathlessly expansive. Cilento's book covers tremendous territory, from the Palestine/Israel conflict to French autofiction to Romanian new wave to Iranian metacinema to the work of American masters of reenactment (namely Errol Morris and Joshua Oppenheimer). His readings are thoughtful and historically-informed. The book weaves a large tapestry of hybrid cinema in the 21st century, demonstrating that much of global cinema today is defined by a politics of truthful fictions, and fictional truths.

Julia Alekseyeva, Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA