This drama recounts the 2017 arrest of the NSA whistleblower with the unlikely name Reality Winner, hopefully paving the way for a movie about Cherries Waffles Tennis.

The Film does not dwell on her unusual name (as The Fifth Estate did Julian Assange’s hair) but does use it to denote the reality of the events depicted. The dialogue is a word-for-word recitation of an FBI recording, right down to the ums and ahs and coughs and pauses. Even the redacted passages are represented by having the characters blink out of existence. The result is a revealing antidote to Hollywood interrogation scenes, and an intimate exploration of duty and freedom.

Based on her play, Tina Satter’s picture opens on the firing of FBI director James Comey by Donald Trump. It then jumps forward 25 days, to NSA interpreter Winner (Sydney Sweeney) greeted in her driveway by a pair of FBI agents (Marchánt Davis and Josh Hamilton). Both Winner and the Feds know what she’s done (leaked evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election to the press) but neither party shows their hand, spending an awkwardly long time trying to secure the suspect’s pets; an eerie foreshadowing of Winner’s impending five-year prison sentence.

Reality impressively conveys the sense that the punishment is disproportionate without deviating from the transcript. The agents are not cruel to her (though they never read her rights or prompt her to call a lawyer) and effectively draw a confession. The injustice is subtly implied; screens in her workplace constantly show Fox News, which she admits drove her attempt to stop the corruption. An airforce veteran seeking deployment to Afghanistan, Winner says her job was to serve her country. Her greatest crime is the AFI poster hanging on her wall.

The Movie is clinical yet compassionate, a daring dose of reality in a world where Trump tried to flush documents down the toilet. Where the verbatim style proved alienating in the Suffolk Strangler musical London Road and queasy crime reenactment Compliance, here it benefits the flick with its creepy, uncanny quality – almost like watching AI recite a human conversation. But Sweeney injects humanity into the performance, brilliantly crumbling over 80 intense minutes. Because of its raw immediacy, the film gets under her skin better than most biopics. While The Fifth Estate was immediately awkward, history will look kindly on Reality.