We’re excited that the Independent Lens documentary The Kill Team has been picked up for distribution by widely respected Oscilloscope Labs, which means you’ll have the opportunity to check the film out both in theaters and on television; its Independent Lens PBS debut will be for the 2014-2015 season, while the theatrical release will be dates TBD in 2014.
The film, which was called “stunning” by New York Magazine‘s David Edelstein and “powerful…jaw-dropping” by Stephanie Merry in The Washington Post, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary. It’s also played at Hot Docs, AFI Docs, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Gate Award for Bay Area Documentary Feature.
The Kill Team is about a young soldier in Afghanistan who attempted to alert the military to atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers, and who then himself became a target of one of the largest war crimes investigations in U.S. history. The Kill Team offers extraordinary access to the soldiers who were convicted and the evidence used against them, in a story largely impenetrable to the media. “We are thrilled to bring The Kill Team to theaters and to Independent Lens next year, coinciding with the official withdrawal from the longest war in U.S. history,” filmmaker Dan Krauss told us. “It’s a moment for the country — the world, even — to reflect on the price paid not just in terms of blood and treasure, but also in terms of psychological and moral injuries.” Krauss, who directed the Oscar-nominated short doc The Death of Kevin Carter, adds, “Our hope is that the theatrical release will make this vital story part of the national conversation and the broadcast will dramatically amplify it. And what better place than public television to allow this deeply complex story to take hold.” Keep tabs on The Kill Team by following the film on Facebook and Twitter.