Plot - You may feel these are spoilers - Your choice to read

Overview
FAY GRIM
a new film written and directed by Hal Hartley

Fay Grim is a single Mom from Woodside, Queens, New York, manically preoccupied with raising her 14 year old son, Ned, so he won’t grow up to be like his father.

His father, Henry, is missing.

Seven years earlier, he accidentally killed a vicious neighbor and fled – never to be seen or heard from again.

Fay’s brother, Simon, is a popularly vilified and world famous poet (formerly a garbage man) serving ten years in prison for aiding and abetting Henry’s escape. In the quiet of his cell, Simon has had time to think about the tumultuous years of Henry’s presence amongst them – chronicled earlier in the film Henry Fool (1997).

Simon has come to suspect that Henry was not the ego-maniac garbage man, sex fiend, and failed literary genius he appeared to be. He suspects Henry’s apparently worthless autobiography – his “Confessions” – might just be some sort of coded history of international atrocities committed by various governments throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, the CIA tell Fay her missing husband is dead – killed in a hotel fire in Sweden days after fleeing America in 1997. They have also discovered the French Government have two of Henry’s notebooks – drafts of his magnum opus, his “Confession” – and they insist the books contain information dangerous to the security of the United States.

The crafty and suspicious CIA agent, Fulbright, convinces Fay to travel to Paris and retrieve her husband’s property. She agrees to do this in exchange for Simon’s release from prison. But it turns out to be an enormous con-game which pitches Fay deep into a world of international espionage where she begins to learn of the astonishing rumors concerning her apparently worthless husband.

He is a tremendously wanted man. And she’s not so sure that’s a bad thing.

From New York City to Paris, from Paris to Istanbul, Fay Grim – a well intentioned but uninformed American – learns more about the world than any one person should know. And with each new turn of the screw, she is led deeper and deeper into the fantastic history of her misunderstood husband – the only man she has ever truly loved – the incorrigible Henry Fool – who is not only alive, but in more trouble than ever – the most wanted man on earth.

Can she get to him before the secret service agencies of four different nations try to kill him?

Can she save the hapless airline stewardess and part-time topless dancer Bebe Konchalovsky who has worked so hard to convince her of Henry’s importance to both their lives?

Will she inadvertently lead the CIA to the Afghan terrorist Jallal Said Khan whom Henry is thought to be advising?

And will she ever be able to go back home to Woodside, Queens?

We hope so.