Lifestyle
November 17, 2023
“Stinky Lunch Kids Strike Back”: South Asians Redefine What American Food Can Mean
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Bedatri D. Choudhury Journalist and chef Pervaiz Shallwani’s mother moved from Pakistan to Toronto, where she ate her first hot dog in 1975. “She thought it was the grossest…...
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
Beyond the Films
November 06, 2023
The Complex Role and Diverse Array of Chaplains in the Military
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Ivonne Spinoza When you hear the term chaplain, if you're not in the military, what usually comes to mind? It could be a pop culture reference, like Father Mulcahy…...
Interviews
September 25, 2023
“Your Story Makes You Strong”: Sansón, an Incarcerated Man, Watches His Life as Documentary Reenactment
Craig Phillips in Behind the Films
By Craig Phillips with Rodrigo Reyes and Sansón & Me team The life story of a young man serving life in prison for murder, Sansón and Me is told through…...
Interviews
September 18, 2023
From Crimmigration Court Interpreter to Lifelong Friends
Craig Phillips in Behind the Films
Mexican American filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes was and still is a court interpreter in rural California. It was in that capacity that he met then 19-year-old Mexican migrant Sansón Noé Andrade,…...
Interviews
September 15, 2023
Short Film “Folk Frontera” Shows the Culture of Life on the Border
Independent Lens in Behind the Films
By Ivonne Spinoza Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn’s Folk Frontera is a border-set tale, expertly portraying the beauty and heartbreak that comes with living on the U.S.-Mexico border. Connecting two…...
Following a cancer diagnosis, Sister Úna—a mischievous, rule-breaking Catholic nun dedicated to social justice—chooses to live as she’s dying. In this touching end-of-life documentary, the self-proclaimed “leader of the misfits” plans her funeral in her last nine months to live. Read More
Were trees intentionally planted to exclude and segregate a Black neighborhood? Racial tensions ignite in this documentary, when a historically Black neighborhood in Palm Springs, California, fights to remove a towering wall of tamarisk trees. The trees form a barrier, believed by some to segregate the community, frustrating residents who… Read More
Liberty City, Miami, was home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S. Now with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold. Wealthy property owners push inland to higher ground, creating a speculators’ market in the historically Black neighborhood… Read More
Between 2011 and 2013, tubas were stolen from high schools across Southern California. Against this backdrop, hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel generates new sensitivity to sound and meaning in an unconventional documentary experience. Read More
Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative,… Read More