"Rust" presents the history of Rust Belt poverty, detailing industrialization and deindustrialization and also racism and mass incarceration, using the city of Newark, New Jersey as microcosm. It explores solutions to inner city intergenerational poverty through the voices of scholars, economists, physicians, activists, and the community.

Eminent historians and economists chronicle the historic rise and fall of U.S. industrialization which, coupled with aftershocks of slavery and failed government policies, has crippled cities with abandoned factories and the human rust of deep persistent poverty. Audiences will understand how the history of racism in America, beginning with slavery, morphed into Convict Leasing, Jim Crow Laws and, ultimately, mass incarceration.

Viewers are taken through boot camp for the recently incarcerated as cameras follow one man's reentry journey into the work force and society.

To tell its tale, "Rust" is accented by archival visuals, cinéma vérité footage, music, and filmmaker Jerome Bongiorno's bold animation to illustrate the film's events and statistics.