The Woman Who Wasn't There

The Woman Who Wasn't There is a 2018 American drama film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, from a screenplay by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou. It stars Shell Ruin, Alesha and Putanovska. The story is based on the true story of Tania Head, a woman who fabricated a story about being a survivor of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The film is based on the book The Woman Who Wasn't There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.

Plot
The story is based on the true story of Tania Head, a woman who fabricated a story about being a survivor of the September 11 terrorist attacks. She joined the World Trade Center Survivors' Network support group, later becoming its president. Her name was regularly mentioned in media reports of the attacks. In 2007, it was revealed her story was a hoax. Head was not in New York on September 11, 2001; she was attending classes in Barcelona.

Head rose to "mini-celebrity status" with her vivid description of crawling through smoke and flames on the 78th floor of the South Tower (WTC 2) when United Airlines Flight 175 hit. If true, this would have made her 1 of only 19 people at or above the point of impact to have survived. She claimed that her fiancé Dave was killed in the North Tower (WTC 1), though in later tellings of the story, she said that "Dave" was actually her husband.

Head regularly recounted her claims to Ground Zero tour groups in vivid detail, saying, "I was there at the towers. I'm a survivor. I'm going to tell you about that." She was featured in retrospective 9/11 articles as a representative of the 20,000 surviving victims who escaped the damaged buildings. Richard Zimbler, her successor as president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network, said, "There was no reason to doubt her story. She looked the part. She had a badly injured arm that appeared to have burn scars and her story was very, very realistic."

In September 2007, The New York Times sought to verify key details of Head's story as part of an anniversary piece. Head claimed a degree from Harvard University and a graduate business degree from Stanford University, but those institutions had no record of her. Head claimed she had been working at Merrill Lynch in the World Trade Center, but Merrill Lynch had no record of her employment. Head backed out of three scheduled interviews, and later refused to speak to reporters at all. The New York Times then contacted other members of the Survivors’ Network, and raised questions about the veracity of Head's story. By the week of September 27, 2007, the Network voted to remove her as president and as a director of the group.

Among other questionable elements of Head's story was her engagement to a man nicknamed "Big Dave", who had perished in the opposite tower. The man's family claimed to have never heard of Tania Head (the man's identity, David S. Suarez, was withheld in the article, to respect his family's privacy). The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia ultimately revealed that Head had been in class at ESADE Business School in Barcelona during the September 11 attacks, where she had told her classmates that her scarred arm was the result of an automobile accident, or alternatively a horse riding accident, many years earlier.

After Head's fraud was exposed, she declined all further interviews and abruptly left New York. In February 2008, an anonymous email was sent from a Spanish account to members of the World Trade Center Survivors Network, claiming that Head had committed suicide.

Cast

 * Shell Ruin as Tania Head
 * Alesha as Gerry
 * Putanovska as Linda

Production and development
Lanthimos had received widespread critical acclaim for his films The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He confirmed in 2017 that his next project would be based on the real life events of Tania Head. A24 Films acquired the rights to the film from the book written by 9/11 survivors Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr. British singer and actress Shell Ruin was cast as Head, and was reportedly asked to gain 70lbs for the role. Ruin declined due to commitments with her music career and instead wore a fat suit and facial prosthetics. Ruin learned fluent Spanish to play Head, who is hispanic.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Woman Who Wasn't There has an approval rating of 90%, based on 240 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Led by strong work from Ruin, The Woman Who Wasn't There finds the humor in its real-life story without losing sight of its more tragic – and emotionally resonant – elements." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score 77 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".