--- title: 'A Gay Girl in Damascus': Watch an Exclusive Clip From New Documentary description: The movie tells the story of a catfishing situation that drew international attention canonical: https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-21T15:15:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T09:24:01.005Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Watch a Clip From New Documentary 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' og:description: The movie tells the story of an international catfishing situation og:url: https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776bbe7881ace7bf/69885ba92dce01bbe39e4b56/amina2.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: amina2 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch a Clip From New Documentary 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' twitter:description: The movie tells the story of an international catfishing situation twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776bbe7881ace7bf/69885ba92dce01bbe39e4b56/amina2.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Watch an Exclusive Clip From New Documentary _A Gay Girl in Damascus_ by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 21, 2015 3:15 PM UTC  SundanceNow Doc Club by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Jul 21, 2015 3:15 PM UTC Plenty of people have been catfished online—but few of those stories become the subject of international controversies. When Canadian activist Sandra Bagaria became involved with blogger Amina Arraf, she thought her girlfriend was a half-Syrian, half-American lesbian living in Damascus. Arraf blogged about her life on a site by the same name as this documentary, “A Gay Girl in Damascus.” But when she stopped blogging suddenly, and a “cousin” wrote on her blog that she had been kidnapped, it sent an international community into a panic. But once people started looking into Amina’s history, as seen in this exclusive clip, they realized there was something fishy about her story. Eventually, it came out that “Amina” was really Tom MacMaster, an American who was studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Watch how the pieces of the puzzle started to come together. _A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile_ will open in select cities and [stream on SundanceNow Doc Club](http://www.docclub.com/amina/) on Friday. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/"},"headline":"Watch an Exclusive Clip From New Documentary A Gay Girl in Damascus","datePublished":"2015-07-21T15:15:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T09:24:01.005Z","description":"The movie tells the story of a catfishing incident that drew international attention","url":"https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/","keywords":["movies","Documentary","Damascus"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776bbe7881ace7bf/69885ba92dce01bbe39e4b56/amina2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt776bbe7881ace7bf/69885ba92dce01bbe39e4b56/amina2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"amina2","caption":"","creditText":"SundanceNow Doc Club","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3964620/a-gay-girl-in-damascus/","name":"Watch an Exclusive Clip From New Documentary A Gay Girl in Damascus"}}]}] ```