''Profile'' is a 2018

screenlife Screenlife or computer screen film is a genre of visual storytelling where all the events are shown on a computer, tablet or smartphone screen. It became popular in the 2010s with the growing impact of the Internet. According to Timur Bekmambeto ...

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

directed by

Timur Bekmambetov Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov (, ; ; born June 25, 1961) is a Russian-Kazakhstan, Kazakh film Film director, director, Film producer, producer, screenwriter, and tech entrepreneur. He is best known for the fantasy epic ''Night Watch (2004 fi ...

, from a screenplay by Bekmambetov, Britt Poulton, and Olga Kharina, based upon the non-fiction book ''In The Skin of a Jihadist'' by Anna Erelle. It stars Valene Kane,

Shazad Latif Shazad Latif (born Iqbal Amin; 8 July 1988) is a British actor, who starred as Tariq Masood in the BBC TV series '' Spooks'', Clem Fandango on '' Toast of London'', and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in ''Penny Dreadful''. In 2017, he was cast as Chi ...

, Christine Adams, Amir Rahimzadeh and Morgan Watkins. The film had its world premiere at the

68th Berlin International Film Festival The 68th annual Berlin International Film Festival took place from 15 to 25 February 2018. German filmmaker Tom Tykwer served as Jury President. American film director Wes Anderson's animated film ''Isle of Dogs'' opened the festival, becoming f ...

on February 17, 2018, in the Panorama section. It was released in the United States on May 14, 2021, by

Focus Features Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as part of Universal Pictures, a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in th ...

, and received mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

In order to investigate the recruitment of a young European women by

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...

, journalist Amy Whittaker creates a new

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

profile under the alias of Melody Nelson. She creates a persona online of a woman who has recently converted to

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

. Soon Amy is contacted by Bilel, an ISIS fighter from Syria. They begin to talk to each other regularly and after some time she begins to develop real romantic feelings for him.

Cast

* Valene Kane as Amy Whittaker *

as Bilel * Christine Adams as Vick * Morgan Watkins as Matt * Amir Rahimzadeh as Lou * Emma Cater as Kathy * Marie Hamilton as Waitress

Production

The film is based on French journalist Anna Erelle's book ''In the Skin of a Jihadist'' about her investigation into the recruitment of young women by

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

on February 17, 2018. It also screened at

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

on March 11, 2018. In March 2021,

acquired distribution rights to the film, and set it for a May 14, 2021, release.

Reception

Box office

In the United States, ''Profile'' was released alongside ''

Spiral In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. Helices Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:Those Who Wish Me Dead ''Those Who Wish Me Dead'' is a 2021 American action thriller film directed by Taylor Sheridan with a screenplay by Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt, and Sheridan, based on Koryta's novel of the same name. The film follows a boy (Finn Little) wh ...

'', and '' Finding You'', and grossed $260,000 from 2,033 theaters on its first day of release. It went on to debut to $730,290, finishing ninth at the box office.

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 61% based on 94 reviews, and an average rating of 6/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "''Profile''s unique narrative gimmick is enough to carry the film partway, but it's ultimately overwhelmed by an increasingly ludicrous plot." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 54 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while

PostTrak PostTrak is a U.S.-based service that surveys film audiences for film studios. History The service conducts surveys in the top 20 markets in the U.S. and Canada with the use of polling cards and electronic kiosks. A PostTrak report for a film a ...

reported 65% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 37% saying they would definitely recommend it. The film won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlinale.

References

External links

* {{Timur Bekmambetov 2018 films 2018 thriller films 2010s mystery thriller films American mystery thriller films British mystery thriller films Films directed by Timur Bekmambetov Focus Features films Films about Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Bazelevs Company films Screenlife films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films 2010s British films