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.
Trailer | Independent Lens Fall 2021 Season
Independent Lens is America’s home for documentaries, airing Mondays on PBS. Watch live or stream anytime on the PBS Video app.
Trailer | The People vs. Agent Orange
The People vs. Agent Orange closely follows two activists as they take on the chemical industry, and demand accountability for the pernicious legacy caused by the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.
Trailer | Two Gods
An intimate documentary about faith, renewal, and healing, Two Gods follows a Muslim casket maker and ritual body washer in New Jersey, as he takes two young men under his wing to teach them how to live better lives.
Trailer 8 | Philly D.A. | Episode 8
Frustrated Krasner supporters warn he must accelerate plans to phase out cash bail.
Trailer 7 | Philly D.A. | Episode 7
Krasner must decide whether to pursue a rarity—murder charges against a cop.
Trailer | The Donut King
An immigrant story with a (glazed) twist, The Donut King follows the journey of Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy, who arrived in California in the 1970s and, through a mixture of diligence and luck, built a multi-million dollar donut empire up and down the West Coast.
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