The film revolves around a man named Nick Yarris, who was convicted of murder and spent 21 years at Death Row in Pennsylvania. Nick seems to still be suffering from his pain until he found an element of his salvation in a passion for literature to prove the opposite of what everyone had already expected.
David Sington's The Fear of 13 is many things -- blisteringly immediate, compelling, emotionally devastating -- but at times it may have you pondering whether it fits into any traditional "documentary" category.
It's a striking, compelling film that is incredibly personal. Yet, it's hard, at the end, not to feel as though we've been manipulated by both the filmmaker and Yarris.
Not so much an interviewee as a monologuist, Yarris leads us on a labyrinthine journey that has as much to say about the art of storytelling as it does about the iniquities of crime and punishment.
"The Fear of 13" is the classic stranger-than-fiction scenario, but it's also a testament to the power of storytelling, which can make the truth sound like embellishment.
