Blog

The Roh family trek through the jungle at night.
Interviews

January 05, 2024

What Happens to Your Family When You Escape North Korea, and Other Harrowing Tales from Beyond Utopia

Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films

The harrowing, riveting documentary Beyond Utopia, captures what life is like for refugees after escaping North Korea. What happens to the family you left behind? How hard is it to…...

Beyond Utopia

They grew up believing their land was paradise. Now, they risk everything in escaping it. In an unforgettable documentary, follow families on a treacherous journey to defect from their homeland of North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and possible execution looms over their passage, revealing a world many… Read More

Credit: Diana Mara Henry Photography Caption: Welfare rights leaders (including Johnnie Tillmon and Beaulah Sanders) put their hands together, celebrating passage of their National Plan of Action item at the First National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas.
Beyond the Films

May 16, 2023

From Mothers’ Pensions to Welfare Queens, Debunking Myths about Welfare

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Lennlee Keep A common mindset through modern American history is that people living in poverty simply don't want to work.¹ For decades, politicians have used programs like food stamps, unemployment,…...

Folk Frontera

Far West Texas is a place where local folklore looms as large as the landscape. Two fronteriza women—one a public radio music show host, the other a Mariachi and folklórico dancer—live in two cultures at the same time, as they struggle to find their place in the vast Chihuahuan Desert. Read More

The Romans family putting up missing person poster in Brooks County, for their missing brother
Interviews

January 10, 2022

Confronting the Agonizing Facts of Life and Death in Brooks County

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Missing in Brooks County is an eye-opening investigation set in an unforgiving region of South Texas, where migrants go missing more than anywhere else in the United States. The documentary…...

Ferguson Rises

How does a father find purpose in pain? In 2014, Michael Brown Sr.’s son was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that fueled the global Black Lives Matter movement. But his personal story seeking justice and healing has not been told until now. Read More

Cured

When doctors classified homosexuality as a mental illness to be “cured,” they employed cruel treatments like electroshock and lobotomies. LGBTQ+ activists and their allies fought back — and won a momentous victory when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders in 1973. Read More

Man on Fire

June 23, 2014: A 79-year-old white Methodist minister named Charles Moore drove to an empty parking lot in his old hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, and set himself on fire. He left a note on his car’s windshield explaining that this act was his final protest against the… Read More

Missing in Brooks County

Migrants go missing in rural South Texas more than anywhere else in the U.S. For many families whose loved ones have disappeared after crossing the Mexico border, activist detective Eddie Canales is their last hope. Unlock the mysteries and confront the agonizing facts of life and death in Brooks County,… Read More