Watch An American Crime

An American Crime is a 2007 film based on an actual case of child abuse that took place in the state of Indiana. It is the story of Sylvia Likens played by, Academy Award nominee, Ellen Page. Page's narration takes the audience back to the sixties and into the once simply life of a teenage girl, and through her dramatic transition from innocence and disbelief to a brutal reality of torture and abuse at the hands, and unquestioned direction, of her caretaker, Gertrude Baniszewski. Catherine Keener, also nominated for an Academy Award, portrays the struggles of a poor and ailing single mother. She fights to feed, to cloth and to protect her six children from repeating the life that has molded her into the scared and mentally unsound villain she has become. An American Crime is a real-life story that poses, and answers, the very real-life problems of fear-driven decisions, follow-the-crowd behavior and unchallenged authority.