The use of close-circuit video footage in a film has a way of suggesting a crime. The images from a ceiling surveillance camera of the basketball star Brittney Griner approaching the screening machinery in the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow and, a short time later, of the security officers working their way through her baggage offers a case in point. Only the crime in the “The Brittney Griner Story” — an ESPN “30 for 30” documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival — isn’t the half-empty cannabis cartridge pen they find but the wrongful detainment of an American citizen for political purposes. Doubtful? You won’t be after watching the biographical dive into the live and ordeal of the WNBA star by director Alexandria Stapleton (“Sean Combs: The Reckoning”).
It’s been nearly four years since Griner was tried and sentenced to nine years in prison and then released in…