‘POV Shorts’ Acquires Eight Festival-Honored Titles From Emerging and Veteran Voices Premiering Nov. 18 and 25, 2025 on the PBSApp and POV.org as Part of the Series’ Eighth Season
Overview
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New Slate Opens with Festival Darling Chasing Time by Emmy®-winner Jeff Orlowski-Yang & First-time Director, Sarah Keo, and Includes Eden Wurmfeld’s Classroom 4, Monica Villavicencio and Stephanie Liu’s La Orquesta, Haley Watson & Justin Emeka’s Songs of Black Folks, and Imani Dennison’s The People Could Fly
Brooklyn, N.Y. — October 7, 2025 — POV Shorts, the award-winning showcase for independent nonfiction short films, announced today eight acquisitions premiering in its eighth season. Created by visionary emerging and veteran filmmakers, these films pair festival-caliber craft with profound insights into the audacity of everyday lives. Stories offered in POV Shorts' highly anticipated eighth season foreground themes of intergenerational care and mentorship (Classroom 4; La Orquesta); local culture and chosen family; memory, identity and the power of history (The People Could Fly; Songs of Black Folk; MnM, La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave); and stewardship and justice in community (Chasing Time, Your Opinion Please). Additional intersecting threads spotlighted include education as liberation, healing and resilience, climate change and environmental justice, and the craft of place as character.
POV Shorts will premiere episodes across two releases: half on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, followed by the remaining titles on Tuesday, November 25, 2025. A sneak peek of season eight currently available is the film La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave). All other films will be available to stream at POV.org and on the PBS App. Check local listings for PBS broadcast dates. New for this season, select titles will be available on the PBS YouTube Channel beginning January 2026—more information to follow.
True to its founding mission, POV Shorts stays rooted in a “point of view” approach, presenting powerful, timely stories and continuing POV’s legacy as a vital public media platform for bold documentary storytelling that amplifies underrepresented filmmakers and unforgettable protagonists. Curated with an “arthouse-accessible” sensibility, POV Shorts treats short-form documentary as a vital tool for now—compact inventive films that confront urgent issues through the lives of real people and spark constructive conversation across differences.
“I'm incredibly proud of this collection of films, which includes stories pushing creative bounds and highlighting brave individuals who model pathways of impact,” said Opal H. Bennett, POV Senior Producer and POV Shorts Executive Producer, American Documentary. “Every season, it's both our honor and our charge at POV to provide our audience with films that make a difference and spark conversation.”
The slate opens with Chasing Time from the Emmy®-winning team behind Chasing Ice, which follows photographer James Balog as he brings his 15-year Extreme Ice Survey project to a close. Chasing Time, directed by Jeff Orlowski-Yang and Sarah Keo, is an extraordinary exploration of nature, time, and mortality.
The season continues with director Imani Dennison’s poetic, The People Could Fly, uncovering the little-known history of Black gathering spaces and roller-skating culture in Louisville, Kentucky, from the 1960s to mid 2000s; it is the first release from the Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund and the first original produced by American Documentary/POV Shorts to be included in a POV Shorts season. In MnM, director Twiggy Pucci Garçon crafts an exuberant portrait of chosen sisters Mermaid and Milan, emerging runway divas in the drag ballroom community, celebrating their joy, siblinghood, and unapologetic personas. Montana director Marshall Granger’s Your Opinion, Please assembles a decade (1997 to 2007) of non-prescreened, unedited live call-in comments from Yellowstone Public Radio and juxtaposes them with present-day Montana, revealing a state’s ongoing identity debate over community, cost of living, and the right to free expression. In Songs of Black Folk, a co-presentation with LA Times Short Docs, directors Haley Watson and Justin Emeka capture top Black musical talent on a single Pacific Northwest stage, launching a powerful new tradition for Black artists against the backdrop of Juneteenth.
Directors Monica Villavicencio and Stephanie Liu’s La Orquesta, a co-production with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) and co-presented with VOCES Shorts, follows a determined teacher-activist in Atlanta, GA, and her youth orchestra through one school year to offer a fresh perspective on the immigrant experience. Eden Wurmfeld’s Classroom 4 enters a prison classroom where college students and incarcerated learners together study the history of crime and punishment, sparking unexpected conversation and a deeper understanding of justice and humanity. And in La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave), director Karla Claudio documents residents from Oaxacan town Niltepec as they extract indigo blue pigment from the jiquilite plant (Indigofera suffruticosa). Despite the increasing challenges of climate change and the lack of governmental subsidies, residents of all ages are choosing to revive the ancient practice of their Zapotec and Zoque ancestors. The season will also include special presentations of two films by director Richard O’Connor from the StoryCorps collection: StoryCorps: Dear Mrs. Doyle, a touching story of a student who lost his mother, and the lasting impact it had on both of them, and StoryCorps: A Mother’s Promise about a mother who prepares to lose her legal immigration status and the promise she’s made to her daughter.
Lead image: Classroom 4, Credit: Stephen Mercier
Courtesy of Lewis and Clark College
POV Shorts Season 8 Slate
EPISODE 1: CHASING TIME - As photographer James Balog and the team behind Chasing Ice close a 15-year Extreme Ice Survey, they confront mentorship, legacy, and the relentless clock of a warming planet—asking what it takes to keep bearing witness. Available November 18, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp.
Chasing Time
Directors: Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Sarah Keo
Producers: Brette Ragland, Larissa Rhodes, Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Stacey Piculell
A meditative exploration of time and mortality, Chasing Time follows photographer James Balog as he brings the 15-year Extreme Ice Survey project to a close. A beautiful tribute to the power of images, the Emmy-winning team behind Chasing Ice returns to unveil astounding visual evidence of climate change and to inspire action toward a sustainable future.
Photos: Chasing Time
RT: 24’ 20” | Country: USA | Year: 2025 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2024 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
International Premiere, 2024 Montrose LandxSea Filmfest
US Premiere, 2024 Seattle International Film Festival
Winner, Jury Prize for Best Short – 2024 Green Film Festival of San Francisco
Winner, Editing Award – 2024 Festival Arabo Africain du Film Documentaire de Zagora
Winner, Jury Award for Best Documentary Short – 2024 Eastern Sierra Mountain Film Festival
3rd Place Audience Award – 2024 Breckenridge Film Festival
Audience Award Runner-Up for Best Documentary Short – 2025 Woods Hole Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 DOC NYC
Official Selection, 2024 Denver Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 St. Louis International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (DC)
Official Selection, 2025 Trento Film Festival
Honorable Mention – 2024 Jackson Wild Media Awards
EPISODE 2: THE PEOPLE COULD FLY - Weaving a timeless folktale with contemporary portraits, this lyrical short honors Black imagination as a blueprint for freedom—where memory, ritual, and art become acts of flight. Playing with this title is the animated short StoryCorps: Dear Mrs. Doyle. Available November 18, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp.
The People Could Fly
Director: Imani Dennison
Producer: Bryn Silverman,
Co-Producer: Naveen Chaubal, Flor Tejada
The People Could Fly is a poetic documentary about the history of Black gathering spaces in Louisville, Kentucky, from the 1960s to the 2000s. In this intimate video portrait, we delve into the ritual of roller skating and how roller rinks emerged as sanctuaries for Black culture. Through a charged combination of archival footage, still photos, newly shot material, and newsreel footage, we explore the history of a segregated Louisville and the magic that its Black community has conjured as an act of resistance. Cast: Jordan Bridgewaters, Antijuan Osborne, Jordan Wales, Teveon Golden, LaNeisha Beasley, Markice Armstrong Sr., Charita Burns, Juan Burns, Shae Burns, June Bradford, Charlene Hampton Holloway, Miss D (Aka Silverfox), Rick Thompson. Trailer
Co-produced with Chicken & Egg Pictures
Photos: The People Could Fly
RT: 21’ | Country: USA | Year: 2023 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2024 Blackstar Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 DOC NYC
Official Selection, 2025 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 New Orleans Film Festival
Official Selection, 2024 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 DC/DOX
StoryCorps: Dear Mrs. Doyle
Director: Richard O’Connor
It was just two days before Christmas in 1958 when John Cruitt’s mother died after being seriously ill with multiple sclerosis. At the time, he was a student in Cecile Doyle’s third-grade class, and an act of kindness she showed him became stamped in his memory. So, more than 50 years later, he wrote her a letter. RT: 3’.
EPISODE 3: THIS IS AMERICA - Two stories reflecting modern-day America–from big city to small town. Available November 18, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp.
MnM
Director: Twiggy Pucci Garçon
Producers: Colleen Cassingham, Jess Devaney
MnM is an exuberant portrait of chosen sisters Mermaid and Milan, two emerging runway divas in the drag ballroom community. Celebrating their joy, siblinghood, and unapologetic personas, the film explores the power and beauty of being nonbinary in a community that prizes gender ‘realness’. In their first documentary, director Twiggy Pucci Garçon invites audiences into their chosen family, the “House of Garçon,” to showcase two of the house’s burgeoning stars and document their magnetic sisterhood.
Photos: MnM
RT: 15’ | Country: USA | Year: 2023 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere 2023 CPH:DOX
Winner, Best Short Documentary – 2023 Provincetown International Film Festival -
Winner, Shine Award – 2023 Blackstar
Official Selection, 2023 DOC NYC
Official Selection, 2023 DC/DOX
Official Selection, 2023 Outfest LA
Official Selection, 2023 Frameline
Your Opinion, Please
Director: Marshall Granger
Producers: Alana Waksman, Marshall Granger
As America enters the new millennium, listeners across Montana call into Yellowstone Public Radio to express their views on everything from state politics to the Iraq war, or the meaning of poetry. Your Opinion, Please offers voices from across hundreds of episodes to flow in conversation with one another, set against the imagery of present-day Montana.
Photos: Your Opinion, Please
RT: 14’ 20” | Country: USA | Year: 2025 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2025 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Mountainfilm
Official Selection, 2025 DC/DOX
Official Selection, 2025 Palm Springs Shortsfest
Official Selection, 2025 Heartland Indy Shorts
Official Selection, 2025 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Mammoth Lakes Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 GlobeDocs Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Denver Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Montana Film Festival
EPISODE 4: SONGS OF BLACK FOLK - Pews to porches to protest lines, culture-bearers trace a living lineage of Black music—revealing how spirituals, blues, and hip-hop carry history, joy, and a roadmap for tomorrow. Available November 25, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp
Songs of Black Folk
Directors: Haley Watson, Justin Emeka
Producer: Haley Watson
Songs of Black Folk, a new musical tradition, brings together the largest gathering of Black musical talent on a single stage in the Pacific Northwest, marking a new era for Black artists in the PNW, on the meaningful backdrop of Juneteenth. Led by Ramón Bryant Braxton and Rev. Dr. Leslie Braxton, this performance group inspires audiences and the next generation of Black artists.
Cast: Ramón Bryant Braxton and Rev. Dr. Leslie Braxton.
Co-presented with LA Times Short Docs.
Photos: Songs of Black Folk
RT: 26’ | Country: USA| Year: 2025 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2025 Tribeca Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Indy Shorts International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame – Music Doc Festival
Official Selection, 2025 The Lake County Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Friday Harbor Documentary Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Bend Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Tacoma Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Micheaux Film Festival
EPISODE 5: LA ORQUESTA - In a diverse Atlanta community, a youth orchestra tunes up for its biggest performance yet, showing how music bridges language and politics, heals generational trauma, and stitches a community together—one rehearsal at a time. La Orquesta is a Latino Public Broadcasting co-production and co-presented with VOCES Shorts. Playing with this title is the animated short StoryCorps: A Mother’s Promise.
Available November 25, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp.
La Orquesta
Directors/Producers: Monica Villavicencio, Stephanie Liu
In La Orquesta, a sought-after music teacher and conductor, Juana Alzaga sets out to create Georgia’s first youth orchestra for immigrant families. For most, this is their only opportunity for music education. La Orquesta follows Juana and her orchestra over the course of one school year as they navigate health challenges and increasing hostility toward immigrants, finding solace in music. Trailer
Co-produced with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) and co-presented with VOCES Shorts.
Photos: La Orquesta
RT: 21” 25’ | Country: USA | Year: 2025 | Languages: English & Spanish
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2025 DC/DOX
Official Selection, 2025 New Orleans Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Montclair Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 DOC NYC
Official Selection, 2025 Twin Cities Film Festival
StoryCorps: A Mother’s Promise
Director: Richard O’Connor
In 2000, Maria Rivas immigrated to the United States from El Salvador. A year later, she received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to stay and work legally in the U.S.
In 2019, TPS for people from El Salvador was set to expire. Had Maria been forced to leave the U.S., she wouldn’t have risked taking her American-born children with her, and her 15-year-old daughter Emily would have stayed with close family friends.
Confronting the possibility of separation, Maria remembered the promise she had made to Emily. RT: 2’ 54”
EPISODE 6: CLASSROOM 4 - Inside one public-school classroom, a year unfolds in real time as a devoted teacher and her multilingual students meet testing pressures, family realities, and big feelings with humor, grit, and fierce care. Available November 25, 2025; stream at POV.org and on the PBSApp.
Classroom 4
Director: Eden Wurmfeld
Producers: Eden Wurmfeld, Yael Bridge
Classroom 4 is the story of an award-winning professor teaching "The History of Crime and Punishment" inside a prison to a class of both free students and incarcerated students. Through exploring concepts including masculinity, prison abolition, and mercy, the work reveals the true cost of mass incarceration and the power of human connection to transform society.
Photos: Classroom 4
RT: 38’ 54” | Country: USA | Year: 2025 | Language: English
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, Winner, Best Documentary - 2025 Aspen Film ShortsFest
Winner, Best Documentary Award and Immaculate Heart Community Filmmaker Award - 2025 LA Shorts International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 DOCNYC
Official Selection, 2025 DC/DOX 2025
Official Selection, 2025 IndyShorts
Official Selection, 2025 Hamptons International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Woodstock Film Festival
CURRENTLY STREAMING AT POV.org and on the PBSApp
La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave)
Director: Karla Claudio
Producer: Xavier Valenzuela Kat
Residents from Oaxacan town Niltepec extract blue indigo pigment from the jiquilite plant (Indigofera suffruticosa). Despite the increasing challenges of climate change and lack of governmental subsidies, residents of all ages are choosing to revive the ancient practice of their Zapotec and Zoque ancestors in what we hope turns out to be The New Indigo Wave.
Photos: La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave)
RT: 8” 10’ | Countries: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada | Year: 2024 | Language: Spanish
Festivals & Accolades:
World Premiere, 2025 Isla Verde Festival Internacional de Cine y Medioambiente del Caribe
North American Premiere, 2025 Tribeca Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Santa Fe International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 Studio 8 Film Festival
About
About POV Shorts
POV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. The series is known for its curation, and for broadcasting award-winning titles, including: Emmy® nominated Earthrise, Water Warriors, The Changing Same, Emmy® award winners The Love Bugs, the Oscar® winning Days of Waiting, and the Oscar® shortlisted A Broken House and Aguilas. The series won Best Short Form Series at the IDA Documentary Awards in 2023, 2022 and 2020, with A Broken House winning Best Short in 2022. Series titles In the Absence, A Night at the Garden, 4.1 Miles, Joe’s Violin, and Hardwood have all been nominated for Oscar® awards.
About American Documentary, Inc.
American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Acton Family Giving, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.