Arnold Friedman, a respected teacher in Great Neck, New York, is arrested in 1987 along with his teenage son Jesse on charges of molesting children in a home computer class Arnold taught in the family basement. Director Andrew Jarecki builds the film almost entirely from the family's own footage: home movies shot over decades and, most strikingly, videotapes the Friedmans made of themselves during the case itself, arguing, weeping, and turning the camera on each other as the prosecution closes in. Eldest son David, who kept filming throughout, becomes both narrator and witness, while surviving interviews with detectives, former students, and Jesse himself pull the case apart from different angles. The film lays out the evidence used to convict Arnold and Jesse side by side with signs that the investigation relied on coercive interviews and unproven abuse theories then in vogue. Arnold's guilt on some charges is not really in dispute; the disputed question is how much of the rest was manufactured by the process meant to uncover it.