Logline

Sara Jane Moore lived the good life in a wealthy, deeply conservative San Francisco suburb from 1970 -1975. She remained largely isolated while war and social upheaval burned around her. Only after the kidnapping of Patty Hearst — who was the daughter of multimillionaire newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst (and a social acquaintance of Moore) — were her blinders ripped off. Moore became “woke” in a period of great social volatility — an era that directly foreshadowed MAGA, Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and the recent attempts to overthrow the US government — but not before she became an FBI informant who infiltrated (and later converted to) far-left political groups. In the end, Moore’s struggle to integrate the forces of conservatism and revolution were so intense that a bullet flew within inches of an American president.

Interweaving rarely seen archival footage with an imaginatively staged dialogue between Sara Jane Moore, the informant, and Bert Worthington, her FBI control agent, Suburban Fury features exclusive access to Moore, who served 32 years of a life sentence, as she recounts how she went from a conservative suburban housewife to an FBI informant to a radicalized would-be assassin. A beguiling storyteller — confrontational, surprisingly vulnerable, and often seemingly unreliable — Moore’s true nature, as well as the validity of political violence, are ultimately left up to the mind and heart of the viewer.