Slingshot Films

A Good American tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.

It’s been years since Akın has been in and out of the hospital. He’s relentless, angry, and shell-shocked from being stuck in the system. Since his discharge, he’s well aware that his old life is long gone. He has become unable to leave his family house except for occasional visits to religious monuments in Istanbul. During those visits, he falls into a state of ecstasy as he tries to take refuge in God. These divine structures trigger something in him. As he loses touch with his true self, his mind shifts into another reality.

The filmmaker spent a year at Atelier Colla, one of the world’s largest and oldest puppet theatres, which has existed for some 300 years and houses over 3,000 puppets. In reverse chronology, the film – which was written by an artificial neural network – depicts the rituals of the puppeteers.

Fango Rosso (red mud), is the toxic waste of the mining extraction. It covers up the hills of Sulcis, land where the astonishing beauty of the landscape collides with a history betrayed promises, progress as a mirage, politic as deceit.