The Perfect Story is a 2022 Canadian documentary film, directed by Michelle Shephard.[1] Revisiting her 2010 news story about young Somali man Ismael Abdulle, who had his hand and foot amputated by Al-Shabaab militants before Shephard's reportage sparked a campaign to get him transported to another country as a refugee, the film depicts and explores the ethical dilemmas faced by Shephard when Abdulle later revealed that he had lied to her about key details of the incident, and was in fact guilty of attempted theft as Al-Shabaab had claimed.[2]

The Perfect Story
Directed byMichelle Shephard
Written byMichelle Shephard
StarringBryn Hughes
Lea Marin
Michelle Shephard
CinematographyWes Legge
Edited byNick Hector
Music byJustin Small
Ohad Benchetrit
Production
company
Frequent Flyer Films
Distributed byNational Film Board of Canada
Release date
  • September 29, 2022 (2022-09-29) (CIFF)
Running time
73 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

The film premiered at the 2022 Calgary International Film Festival,[2] where it won the DGC Canadian Documentary Award.[3] It was subsequently screened at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto as the opening film of the annual Doc Soup fall screening series,[4] before its television premiere on TVO on October 18.

The film received two Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023, for Best Documentary Program and Best Original Music in a Documentary (Ohad Benchetrit, Justin Small).[5]

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