Blog

Woman with dark brown skintone in profile with sunflower in hair looking into distance with flowers behind her
July, 15, 2025

Ratified

Independent Lens

Ratified brings the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to life through Virginia’s pivotal ratification battle. Led by Black women and with the support of a multi-racial, multi-generational coalition, this documentary traces the legal, political, and deeply personal fight to enshrine gender…
Illustration of a white man in colonial garb towering over miniature couples and families.
September, 30, 2024

The History of White People in America

Independent Lens

A series of musical animations, chronicling diverse experiences of how race has helped shape American culture. These shorts provide insight into the unique lived experiences of historical figures who played a role in the evolving definitions of identity.
Photograph of a man's back. He is sitting on the bottom bunk in a dark prison cell. Near him is a microwave, a few cups strewn about, and a crumpled up piece of paper.
July, 3, 2024

The Strike

Independent Lens

The high-security Pelican Bay prison was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, and with little due process. In 2013, 30,000 incarcerated people went on a hunger strike that spread into a feat of unity across…
Photograph of a man and woman looking at a cityscape out of floor-to-ceiling windows covered in graffiti. One of the windows is broken and glass is scattered along the floor.
July, 3, 2024

Skin of Glass

Independent Lens

A journey to reckon with Brazil’s harsh inequality begins when filmmaker Denise Zmekhol discovers her father’s architectural masterpiece in São Paulo—a 24-story tall modernist icon known as “Pele de Vidro” (Skin of Glass)—is inhabited by hundreds of unhoused people. But…
A photograph of a woman with medium-dark skin tone and short braids is superimposed over a government building at night.
January, 31, 2024

holding bodies: a justice anthology

Independent Lens

The three-part holding bodies: a justice anthology uses personal experiences of arrest, pretrial detention, and incarceration to reconsider the intention, design, and process of America’s justice system.
The Roh family trek through the jungle at night.
Beyond the Films
January, 5, 2024

What Happens to Your Family When You Escape North Korea, and Other Harrowing Tales from Beyond Utopia

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

The harrowing, riveting documentary Beyond Utopia, captures what life is like for refugees after escaping North Korea. What happens to the family you left behind? How hard is it to adjust to life in a modern, alien land? Emmy Award-nominated…
Illustration of a transparent red star laid over a military camp. Three adults and two children are shown fleeing atop the red star.
November, 13, 2023

Beyond Utopia

Independent Lens

They grew up believing their land was paradise. Now, they risk everything in escaping it. In an unforgettable documentary, follow families on a treacherous journey to defect from their homeland of North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and…
Black and white iIllustration of a woman forensic scientist digging up a human skeleton.
July, 18, 2023

El Equipo

Independent Lens

Legendary U.S. anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow sets out to train a new group of Latin American students in the use of forensic anthropology. Their goal: to investigate disappearances in Argentina during the “dirty war.” The group expands its horizons, traveling…
Credit: Diana Mara Henry Photography Caption: Welfare rights leaders (including Johnnie Tillmon and Beaulah Sanders) put their hands together, celebrating passage of their National Plan of Action item at the First National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas.
Beyond the Films
May, 15, 2023

From Mothers’ Pensions to Welfare Queens, Debunking Myths about Welfare

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Lennlee Keep A common mindset through modern American history is that people living in poverty simply don't want to work.¹ For decades, politicians have used programs like food stamps, unemployment, social security, and Section 8 housing not as examples of…
A young woman and an elderly woman reading a letter in a room by the light of a single window.
August, 16, 2022

Hidden Letters

Independent Lens

For centuries in China, the once-secret written language of Nüshu was calligraphed on folded fans and handkerchiefs as hidden letters so women could share stories and express solidarity in a repressive era when many women were denied literacy. Confronting patriarchy,…
Woman in dress dancing and smiling
May, 26, 2022

Folk Frontera

Independent Lens

Far West Texas is a place where local folklore looms as large as the landscape. Two fronteriza women—one a public radio music show host, the other a Mariachi and folklórico dancer—live in two cultures at the same time, as they…
A husband and wife tape a missing persons poster to a telephone pole.
Interviews
January, 10, 2022

Confronting the Agonizing Facts of Life and Death in Brooks County

Independent Lens in Interviews

Missing in Brooks County is an eye-opening investigation set in an unforgiving region of South Texas, where migrants go missing more than anywhere else in the United States. The documentary features activist detective Eddie Canales of the South Texas Human…