Our friends at POV are ready to grab the baton for thought-provoking docs airing Mondays on PBS, with a new slate of films about extraordinarily strong and determined individuals. The 28th season of POV begins this coming Monday, June 22, 2015 at 10 p.m. (check local listings) on PBS and continues through the fall. (Independent Lens will then be back with a new season beginning October 25.)
The 15-film season launches with the ITVS-funded Out in the Night, Blair Dorosh-Walther’s powerful documentary about four African-American lesbians who stand their ground as they face law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and media bias after being accused of gang assault. “This film could help influence the ongoing LGBT civil rights struggle. Everyone should see it,” wrote Steve Boone on RogerEbert.com.
It’s followed in the schedule with Jesse Moss’s acclaimed, eerie, Sundance Special Jury Prize-winning The Overnighters (June 29), which reveals the toll taken on a small town at the center of a modern-day gold rush, where thousands of workers seek a fresh start in the North Dakota oil fields.
Other highlights in the POV season include: Point and Shoot (ITVS), a Tribeca Grand Prize-winning film about Matthew VanDyke’s experiences motorcycling through the Middle East and North Africa where he ultimately ends up joining Libyan rebels; Tough Love (ITVS) by Stephanie Wang-Breal, which chronicles the lives of two parents — one in Seattle and one in New York City — as each fights to be reunited with children taken out of their custody; Web Junkie, about the internet addiction treatment of three Chinese teenagers, obsessive gamers whose preference for the virtual world over the real one is summed up in one jarring statement: “Reality is too fake”; and the Academy Award-nominated Cutie and the Boxer, a moving account of the chaotic and unconventional 40-year love affair and creative partnership between action painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, also an artist.
View the full list of all the excellent films airing for POV‘s new season. The season runs through September.
