Sweetgrass | American Documentary

Sweetgrass

POV Season 24

Feature Film
2011
90 Mins

Sweetgrass presents a riveting and poetic portrait of the American West just as one of its traditional ways of life dies out. Shot amidst the grandeur of Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the film follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into the breathtaking and often dangerous mountains for summer pasture. Magnificently photographed and unsparingly candid, Sweetgrass discovers a world of harsh beauty and arduous labor, where humans still work in rugged intimacy with nature. An Official Selection of the 2010 New York Film Festival.

Voices of the Sea

Feature Film
2018

Interview

Revealing stark realities for the poorest of rural Cubans with unique access and empathy, this is the story of a 30-something mother of four longing for a better life. The tension between wife and aging husband—one desperate to leave ...

Still Tomorrow

Feature Film
2018

Interview

A village woman with no high school diploma becomes China's most famous poet, and her book of poetry the best-selling such volume in China in the past 20 years. Still Tomorrow follows Yu Xiuhua, a 39-year-old woman living with cerebral ...

Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

For 20 years, Lindy has lived with an unbearable feeling of guilt. Committed to fulfilling her civic duty, Lindy sat with 11 other people on a jury that handed down the death penalty to a Mississippi man convicted of a ...

Brimstone & Glory

Feature Film
2018

Interview

The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico, is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. Conflagrant revelry engulfs the town, while artisans show off their technical virtuosity. For the three-quarters of Tultepec residents who work in pyrotechnics ...

Singing With Angry Bird

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Jae-Chang Kim runs a children's choir in Pune, India. Although his quick temper earned him the nickname "Angry Bird," he has made significant changes in the lives of the choir children. But skeptical of the practical value of music ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Temple of Knowledge

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Ronald Clark's father was a custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library ...

StoryCorps Shorts: Driven

Short Film
2016

Short Film

Wendell Scott was the first African American inducted in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. His son, Frank, remembers what it took for his father to cross the finish line at racetracks throughout the South in the '60s and '70s.

StoryCorps Shorts: School's Out

Short Film
2016

Short Film

Following the federal mandate to integrate schools in the 1950's, Reverend James Seawood recalls how African Americans were forced out of Sheridan, Arkansas, the fate of his beloved school, and the human cost of "urban renewal."

Marathon

Short Film
2016

Short Film

In Theo Rigby and Kate McLean's short film Marathon, an undocumented immigrant, Julio Sauce, competes in the New York City Marathon. This film is part of Immigrant Nation, an interactive storytelling project designed to collect immigrant narratives and share ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Saint of Dry Creek

Short Film
2015

Short Film

Patrick Haggerty grew up the son of a dairy farmer in rural Dry Creek, Washington, during the 1950s. As a teenager, Pat began to understand he was gay — something he thought he was hiding well. But one day, after ...

Joe's Violin

Short Film
2017

Short Film

In the Oscar-nominated Joe's Violin, a donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship. 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez show how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times, and ...

Graven Image

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument: Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

Balloonfest

Short Film
2018

Short Film

The city of Cleveland was abuzz on September 27, 1986. Over 1.5 million balloons were about to be released at once, breaking the world record. What could go wrong?

The Changing Same

Short Film
2019

Short Film

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where resident and poet L. Lamar Wilson runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history. A co-presentation ...

Stay Close

Short Film
2019

Short Film

Stay Close blends home videos and animation in an expressionistic montage to tell the underdog story of Keeth Smart, an African American fencer from Brooklyn who overcomes a gauntlet of hardships on his road to the Olympics.

Gentlemen of Vision

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Gentlemen of Vision follows a year in the life of coach, counselor and founder Marlon Wharton, and his 2015-2016 class of young Black males as he strives to rewrite future prospects for his students. While striving for excellence in school ...

For Ahkeem

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Expelled from high school, Daje Shelton is only 17 years old when she is sentenced by a judge – not to prison, but to an alternative school, the Innovative Concept Academy. It offers Daje one last chance to earn a high ...

Agents of Change

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Agents of Change examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960’s, focusing on student demands at two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. Many of the ...

100 Years

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

100 Years: One Woman's Fight for Justice is the compelling story of Elouise Cobell, a petite Blackfeet warrior from Montana, the great granddaughter of the legendary, Mountain Chief. As an advocate for Native American financial self-determination and independence, she conducted ...

The Invisible Patients

Feature Film
2018

Trailer

Through the story of Jessica Macleod, Ph.D., a dedicated nurse practitioner in Evansville, Indiana, and her four homebound and marginalized patients, The Invisible Patients sheds light on some of the most urgent healthcare issues facing our nation today: from ...

89 Steps

Interactive
2014

In the late 1950s, Marta's mother found refuge for her family in Williamsburg after leaving her village in Puerto Rico and enduring homelessness and hunger elsewhere in New York. When Marta became a single mother, she fought hard to stay ...

Immigrant Nation

Interactive
2014

Immigrant Nation is an interactive storytelling project designed to document the United States' diverse immigrant narratives and experiences and share them with the world. Through short documentary films, live events and an online Story Hub, the project aspires to shift ...

Film Credits

Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Ilisa Barbash

Press Room

America ReFramed Acquires the Compelling Documentary A Woman on the Outside to Open WORLD’s Newest Content Theme “Liberated Lives” Beginning March 28, 2024 POV Acquires Who I am Not, a Thoughtful Documentary About What it Means to be Intersex in a Binary World, Will Debut as Part of POV’s 37th Season Launching Summer 2024 POV Acquires Danish Director Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized, About Inuit Lawyer Aaju Peter’s Life-long Fight for Indigenous Rights; Will Debut as Part of POV’s 37th Season Launching Summer 2024

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