Ghosts of Sugar Land

I enjoyed this very short documentary despite the fact that it had no apparent structure or objective. I think it missed a great opportunity to explain in depth why his closest friends think this man radicalised,how it impacted their lives and how they think it could have been avoided.

A group of suburban Muslims discuss how their friend got interested in Islamic practices and what led him to convert to Islam.

Ghost of Sugar Land is a short documentary film that was interesting but too brief. The concept of the short documentary would have been executed perfectly if they questioned the group as to why they believe their friend is an FBI informant and give detail on that subject.

Ghost of Sugar Land is a short documentary that was poorly done. A meaningless film that could have been a captivating watch.

This is a pretty cheap and baffling documentary. It seems as though the documentarian saw that there was a glimmer of something interesting, threw together a few quick shooting sessions, and then wrapped right before anything interesting happened.

What is this about? Is it about Muslim Americans in the suburban south grappling with prejudice after 9/11? If so, there's really no insight beyond what every American would've already known some 17+ years ago. The 10ish middle aged male interview subjects, who all have their faces masked for reasons that are never really clear, don't really dig deep into their personal experiences or share anything especially reflective or intimate. It's hard to empathize with a mask--harder still when the voice coming from behind the mask is saying fairly surface-level, gossipy things? If this is a movie about how Muslims of Middle Eastern and Asian descent experience life in America, then the revelations are pretty dull.

This movie could have been an examination of Sugar Land, Texas. The title suggests that the locale bears some importance, but the film fails to deliver. We learn that Sugar Land is very diverse in every aspect except for African Americans, and we see yearbook pages full of teenagers of European, East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern descent along with a solitary young black man, who is the center of the film's focus. What are the historical roots of that demographic diversity? How does that play out in the local culture? The film provides no historical context, no maps or statistics, no local news clips, no interviews with city government officials or business owners or law enforcement. I imagine that any of these things could have illuminated exactly what this part of the country is like... but no.

So I suppose what this movie is really about is a young black man who became radicalized by a combination of toxic internet discourse and not having any place to belong in his community. The movie begins by developing a pseudonym for this central character, yet he's the only person whose face isn't blurred out of the photographs. The text at the end reveals why that's so, but that text also suggests that we could have been watching a different, much more interesting film all this time. Instead of baseless conjecture and the gossipy accusations of anonymous social media friends, we could have been exploring the actual history of this man. Perhaps we could have heard from his family, from other black people in the community... something. That would've been more interesting than what this film is.

I'm willing to concede that maybe the point is to reveal something hypocritical about the masked interview subjects--that we're supposed to find ourselves identifying not with them but with the mysterious man at the center, who's given a face and a name but no actual voice. But if that's the point, then the film tries too hard and succeeds at very little.

The subject of this documentary and the fact it is apparently a sundance winner gave me so much hope for it, but to no avail. This ridiculously short documentary has no substance and explains nothing as to why this man became an extremist, and nothing as to his life as an extremist, It also does not even vaguely explain why so many of his friends thought he was an FBI informant, which could alone make an amazing documentary due to the extreme tactics the FBI use to create informants to exploit non-extreme muslims. to say I was disappointed is an understatement, part of me feels like the only reason this has any critical acclaim is because of the fact that everyone interviewed is in a comical/sinister mask, suggesting they are actually divulging sensitive information, which they arent. Poor, poor documentary, I wouldnt even bother.

The fear and disbelief in the voices of "Mark's" group of friends, is heartbreaking. A man who clearly did not fit in, ran off to the worst possible location on the planet, just to be part of something bigger. Yet, his friends still have hope, telling themselves he might not be the person they think he was all along. To live in the unknown, trying to protect your loved ones from radicalism, brought upon you by a loved one must be a constant battle with yourself and a country that doesn't want to educate itself to move forward. Short, relevant and dismal.