Controversial Dox

Psychopaths... they’ll charm you, manipulate you, then ruin your life. But, not all of them with a gun or a knife. In this extra- ordinary documentary, suspected psychopath Sam Vaknin goes in search of a diagnosis... was he born without a conscience? ‘Making a movie with a psychopath,’ declares I, Psychopath’s director Ian Walker, ‘is a little like poking a snake with a stick.’ Unwittingly, the filmmaker becomes a textbook victim. Joined by Vaknin’s long-suffering but ever-loyal wife Lidia, the threesome embark on a diagnostic road trip to the world’s top experts in psychopathy in which Vaknin (and his wife) undergo a battery of rigorous psychological tests and neuro- scientific experiments. He is the world’s first civilian to willingly seek a diagnosis for psychopathy. The former corporate criminal turns out to be a way better psychopath than any of them imagined. By the end, Walker almost calls it quits on his own film rather than spend another day with its main subject.