Primetime

In 2006, To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen sets out to make television history.

Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers star in Lance Oppenheim’s first narrative feature, revisiting the ethically muddy ‘Dateline NBC’ ratings phenomenon. A morbidly fascinating inquiry into performative justice, moral superiority and public shaming as crude fuel for reality television, Primetime is a superficially fictionalised account of Dateline NBC’s controversial To Catch a Predator, or as Jimmy Kimmel once called it, “Punk’d for pedophiles.” Robert Pattinson is equal parts cracked and chilling as host Chris Hansen, portraying him as a ruthless ratings hunter with a grandiosity complex and a chip on his shoulder.

Screening at Luna Leederville from October 29.