Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton: The Directors Cut (2015) Harlem International Film Festival 2016

Portrait of UFO abductee Travis Walton told by Walton and those who witnessed and investigated his disappearance.

The short version of the story is that Travis Walton and six workers were out in the Arizona forest in November 1975 when they saw a what appeared to be a flying saucer. Travis approached it and he was hit by a beam of blue light which dropped him. His friends fled, then realizing that they should help their friend. Returning to the site of the encounter they found no trace of the UFO or Travis. The sheriff's department investigated, figuring that that perhaps they had killed Travis. Then five days later Travis reappeared thinking only two hours had passed. This set off a firestorm in the media as everyone wanted to know what happened.

I have been following the Walton story since it happened. I have heard every sort of explanation for what happened from its was a copy cat of the UFO INCIDENT  TV movie which had run several shortly before, to it happened to was a cover-up to keep Travis out of trouble. I've seen how the polygraphs have said they were sometimes telling the truth and sometimes not. I've even seen the awful movie FIRE IN THE SKY that was made of the incident with lots of added material to spice it up.  After 41 years of back and forth I still don't know what really happened, but its one hell of a tale.

That said TRAVIS is a pretty good look at what may or may not have happened in November of '75. Siding with the "something did happen" camp the film takes a pretty straight forward pass by the events and the aftermath. Extremely unsensational the film could be charged with being a tad slow except that the film is more interested in getting it all out there instead of being exciting. In a world where most UFO docs are showy History Channel fodder or way too short and undetailed YouTube clips is nice that a film looks at a subject and really investigates it.

While the film could have been a tad more questioning of events, I still think this is a must see film for anyone who has an interested in the subject and wants to know how UFO things played out before cellphone videos.