Hazing | Ryan Abele
Ryan Abele's parents thought his frat brothers would look out for him. Instead, alleged hazing led to his death.
Trailer | Tiktok, Boom.
What does it mean to be a digital native? TikTok, Boom. dissects the platform along myriad cross-sections—algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural—to explore the impact of the history-making app. Balancing a genuine interest with healthy skepticism, delve into the security issues, global political challenges, and racial biases behind the platform.
Trailer | Hazing
Hazing is a widespread, far-reaching practice fueled by tradition, secrecy, groupthink, power, and the desire to belong in fraternities and sororities on college campuses across the U.S. Filmmaker Byron Hurt embarks on a deeply personal journey to understand the underground rituals of hazing, revealing the abuse and the lengths college students will go to fit in.
Trailer | Scenes From the Glittering World
Three Indigenous students experience the highs and lows of adolescence while attending one of the most remote high schools in the United States. Living in the uniquely beautiful but isolated Diné community within the Navajo Nation reservation, they navigate life as teenagers and dream of a glittering future.
Trailer | When Claude Got Shot
In Milwaukee, a 15-year-old attempted to carjack law student Claude Motley and shot him in the face. Through multiple surgeries and catastrophic health care bills, the effects of gun violence upends Claude’s life. Yet he still finds himself torn between punishment for the young man and the injustice of mass incarceration for Black men and boys. Can he find mercy in his heart for his attacker?
Trailer | Try Harder!
At Lowell High School, San Francisco's academic pressure cooker, the kids are stressed out. With a majority Asian American student body, high-achieving seniors share their dreams and anxieties about getting into a top university. But is college worth the grind?
Trailer | Independent Lens Spring 2022 Season
Independent Lens is America’s home for documentaries, airing Mondays on PBS.
AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
Try Harder!
When Claude Got Shot
Scenes from the Glittering World
Trailer | AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
What is the science behind consciousness? Six brilliant researchers from around the world—a brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics scientist, and a Buddhist monk—take you on a mind-blowing quest to investigate this seemingly unsolvable mystery.
Trailer | Writing with Fire
In a male-dominated media landscape, the women journalists of India's all-female Khabar Lahariya ("News Wave") newspaper risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the country's political, social, and local news from a women-powered perspective. From underground network to independent media empire, they defy the odds to redefine power. Nominated for an Academy Award.
Trailer | Apart
Since the beginning of the War on Drugs, the number of women in U.S. prisons has grown drastically. The majority are mothers.
Three unforgettable formerly incarcerated mothers, jailed for drug-related charges, fight to overcome alienation—and a society that labels them "felons"—to readjust to life with their families.
Trailer | Bulletproof
What is the cost of feeling safe? In an era of mass shootings, lockdown drills and teacher firearms training are as much a part of life as homecoming dances and basketball practice. Take a provocative look at fear, violence, and what Americans will do to feel safe in schools.
Trailer | Owned: A Tale of Two Americas
Is the "American Dream" of home ownership a false promise? While the government’s postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class, it also set America on two divergent paths – one of perceived wealth and the other of systematically defunded, segregated communities.
Trailer | Independent Lens Winter 2022 Season
Independent Lens is America’s home for documentaries, airing Mondays on PBS. Watch live or stream anytime on the PBS Video app.
Trailer |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, 80 miles north of the border.
Trailer | A Reckoning in Boston
What happens when you discover that your assumptions are flawed? A white filmmaker starts his academic inquiry by documenting low-income, adult students of color at the Clemente Course in Boston. After time, he comes to terms with his own complicity in racism. Alongside students, a unique filmmaking collaboration forms to explore the area's history of racism and gentrification.
Trailer | Home From School: The Children of Carlisle
"Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” This was the guiding principle that removed thousands of Native American children and placed them in Indian boarding schools. Among the many who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial School were three Northern Arapaho boys. Now, more than a century later, tribal members journey from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to help them finally come home.
Trailer | Duty Free
75-year-old Rebecca loses the only job she's even known. She has no savings, no 401K safety net, and no employment prospects. Rebecca teams up with son Sian-Pierre to take the trip of a lifetime, one bucket list adventure at a time. Her journey uncovers the economic insecurity faced by millions of Americans.
Trailer | Storm Lake
Does American democracy survive without the backbone of independent local journalism? Go inside The Storm Lake Times, a newspaper serving an Iowa town that has seen its fair share of changes in the 40 years since Big Agriculture came to the area. Pulitzer-winning editor Art Cullen and his family dedicate themselves to keeping the paper alive as local journalism across the country dies out.
Trailer | 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.
Trailer | 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.
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