Independent Lens — Season 16

The story of the children bullied at school and online. The film questions assumptions about bullying behaviour beyond cliches and stereotypes of the past. It also examines changes in how schools treat the perpetrators and victims.

Two sisters adopted in China as infants by Californian and Norwegian parents grow up knowing they have a twin living on the other side of the world. Although language is a barrier, their bond grows deeper and they arrange to finally meet.

In April, 2005 a Japanese train engineer accelerated beyond permissible speeds in order to make up an 80-second delay. Brakeless examines the aftermath and questions if Japan is cutting back in the wrong places after a decade of economic st…

Powerless tracks the battle between an Indian electric company and a renegade electrician who illegally connects poor families to the grid.

A nine-year-old child in Burma is spurred to leave his village for the first time in his life when his village gets electricity. He walks for over three days to in search of a seeing his first television.

Rich Hill, winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, goes inside the homes and lives of small town America, where kids confront heartbreaking choices, marginalized parents struggle to survive, and fami…

Tens years after robbing a Bank of America, filmmaker Darius Monroe explores what led him to pull a heist as a teenager in Texas, and returns to the scene of the crime. In this gripping blend of documentary, true crime, and personal essay, …

Winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival, The Kill Team tells the harrowing story of Specialist Adam Winfield, a 21-year-old infantryman in Afghanistan who, with the help of his father Chris, attempted to al…

For the last 170 years, pioneering African American photographers — men and women, celebrated and anonymous — have recorded the dramas and aspirations of generations. Through a Lens Darkly traces their spiritual transformation from slavery …

In the wake of recent events that have sparked a national dialogue, American Denial explores the power of unconscious biases around race and class. Using Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 investigation of Jim Crow racism as a springboard, the film shows…

Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class household with two loving Jewish parents. When she discovers that the man she's always assumed was her father is not her biological parent, she unlocks a powerful family secret.

The investigation into a spate of church burnings that occured in East Texas during January and February 2010 is chronicled.

Three homeless Chicago teens strive to graduate from high school despite the difficulties inherent in their situations.

First hand accounts of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its impact on the Gulf of Mexico.

A Hawaiian transgender woman finds acceptance, but still is searching for love.

Examining daredevil choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her STREB Extreme Action Company. Included: the evolution of her philosophy, which challenges assumptions about art, aging, injury, gender and human possibility.

The story of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, which broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pa., on the night of March 8, 1971, and stole hundreds of secret files that they then shared with members of Congress and the news …

Married in 1975, Richard and Tony lead a 40-year fight for legal immigration status for same sex spouses.

An African family’s tense experience during West African Ebola outbreak. This intimate film brings us on Emmanuel’s journey as he battles to keep his wife and children safe while the Liberian government struggles to contain a devastating vi…


