“I went to his door as a postman...and when he came to the door for a signature, I shot him. Simple.” Or is it? The man behind this straightforward comment (as well as the trigger) is Hassan Abdulrahman, formerly David Belfield, a black nationalist, Muslim convert and the titular American fugitive of this riveting documentary.

On the morning of July 22, 1980, Belfield shot and killed Ali Akbar Tabbatabi, the former press attache for the deposed Shah of Iran at his home in suburban New Jersey. After absconding to Canada and boarding a plane to Geneva, Belfield fled to Tehran and transformed himself into Abdulrahman. His case might have been forgetten were it not for the unexpected international success of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's fiction film Kandahar, which features Hassan in a supporting role.

Abdulrahman / Belfield's appearance in the film provoked a renewed interest in the events surrounding the Iranian Hostage crisis of the late-1970s. And it opened more than a few old wounds. But it is simply the latest twist in one man's crooked path that leads from the 1968 riots in Washington DC through the “October Surprise” and Iran/Contra scandals of the 1980s up to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and beyond. When asked why he agreed to appear in this documentary, Abdulrahman claims he doesn't know. “There is no single truth,” he says. Audiences will no doubt agree. But they will certain find the myriad truths evident in American Fugitive fascinating.
- Jonathan Knipp