Multi award-winning series, POV, hailed as America’s longest-running non-fiction series on television, enters its 36th season with a slate of 16 feature documentaries with themes devoted to caregiving, transnationalism, activism, childhood aspirations, accessibility, and intergenerational relationships. The series' commitment to provide a public platform to showcase bold forms of nonfiction storytelling by filmmakers with diverse voices and perspectives brings audiences unforgettable protagonists with unique points of views. Half of Season 36's films are directed by women, and over two-thirds by filmmakers of color.
Celebrated films previously announced this season include POV alumni director Simon Lereng Wilmont and producer Monica Hellström’s timely Oscar-nominated documentary, A House Made of Splinters. As the war in Eastern Ukraine takes a heavy toll on families living near the frontline, a small group of strong-willed social workers work tirelessly in a special kind of orphanage to create an almost magical safe space for kids to live in. In Vietnamese first-time director Hà Lệ Diễm's riveting Oscar Shortlisted feature, Children of the Mist, she details the challenges facing a Hmong girl living in rural Northern Vietnam caught between tradition and modernity.
Erika Dilday, Executive Director, American Documentary and Executive Producer, POV and America ReFramed said:
"I'm so excited about Season 36's line-up. We are bringing our viewers closer to different countries, different people and different ideas. POV puts a lot of care and effort not only into how we choose stories, but who gets to tell them. We strive for authenticity and relatability.
"One of the best things about this season is we are not shying away from bold stories. I believe good documentary filmmaking should be about subjects and topics that often make us feel a little uncomfortable and challenge how we see our world."
"A diversity of voices and perspectives remains central to PBS’s mission, and we're excited to bring many new independent films from POV to our audiences," said Sylvia Bugg, Chief Programming Executive and General Manager, General Audience Programming, PBS. "This new season documents moving stories from across the globe, continuing our legacy of providing programming that is educational, informational, and inspiring."
As sweeping issues in cultures collide, five films explore transnationalism and the effect land has on identity. The season opens June 26 with the previously announced After Sherman, Jon-Sesrie Goff’s poetic feature debut about his quest to unearth his Black inheritance amidst a violent past in the South Carolina Low Country. In A Story of Bones, directors Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere chronicle Annina van Neel's and Peggy King Jorde’s efforts to reclaim a burial site containing thousands of formerly enslaved Africans on the famed British territory, St. Helena.
Set between the rodeo rings of eastern North Carolina and the longed-for Mexican hometown of an undocumented family living in the U.S. for 20 years, Bulls and Saints by director Rodrigo Dorfman and producer Peter Eversoll, is a story of reverse migration, belonging, rebellion, and redemption. Leslie Tai’s first feature-length documentary, How to Have an American Baby, is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the shadow economy of Chinese birth tourism in the U.S. Juliana Curi’s and Uýra Sodoma's visually stunning, Uýra: The Rising Forest, is about an Amazonian indigenous trans performance artist who uses their craft to inspire indigenous and riverside youths to connect to themselves, their ancestors, and their environment in Brazil.
The series stays true to its "point of view" roots with three deeply personal stories about caregiving, family, and people with disabilities. Eat Your Catfish, filmed from the perspective of Kathryn, a woman with ALS, is an unvarnished account of a family's bond and of a woman’s will to live. With both empathy and gallows humor, directors Adam Isenberg, Senem Tüzen and Noah Amir Arjomand—who is Kathryn's son—probe the breakdown of a family pushed to its tipping point. In director Rea Tajiri's vibrant tender cine-poem, Wisdom Gone Wild, the filmmaker collaborates with her Nisei mother as they confront the painful curious reality of wisdom "gone wild" in the shadows of dementia. In unseen, director Set Hernandez follows their friend, Pedro, an aspiring social worker facing the uncertainty of life as a blind, undocumented immigrant.
Continuing with stories focused on family the season offers four films about intergenerational relationships and childhood aspirations. Previously announced, Murders That Matter, directed and produced by POV alumnus and Peabody Award-winner Marco Williams (Two Towns of Jasper), documents Movita Johnson-Harrell, an African American, Muslim mother, over five years, as she transitions from being a victim of trauma and violence into a fierce advocate against gun violence in Philadelphia’s Black communities.
Director Inna Sahakyan tells the forgotten story of a teenage girl who survives the Armenian genocide, escapes to America, becomes the face of a massive humanitarian campaign and makes a meteoric rise as a silent movie star in1920’s Hollywood in the animated documentary Aurora’s Sunrise. The feature debut of So Yun Um's Liquor Store Dreams, is an intimate, autobiographical documentary about two Korean American children of liquor store owners who must reconcile their own dreams with those of their immigrant parents. Director/producer and MIT alum, Arthur Musah, traces the journey of four inspiring African MIT undergrads who strive to be agents of change back in their home countries of Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe in the uplifting Brief Tender Light.
The season also examines the intersectionalities of activism, inclusion and belonging with two films that invite viewers to be more engaged in their communities and the greater world. Directors Andres "Jay" Molina and Alexis Neophytides' raw, heartfelt film, Fire Through Dry Grass, exposes–in real time– institutional neglect at a New York City nursing home during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic while following Jay and his friends, a group of disabled Black and brown artists, who refuse to be ignored. An urgent depiction of truth in crisis, While We Watched, directed by Vinay Shukla, follows primetime Indian journalist Ravish Kumar – a man troubled by the future of news and the soul of his nation.
"From the Amazon Forest to Ukraine and Vietnam, Inner City Los Angeles to the shorelines of South Carolina, this season's POV artists reveal the contours of our humanity, from various vantage points and lived experiences," said Chris White, Executive Producer, American Documentary and POV. "I am confident each film will serve as an artful revelation to our viewers by introducing them to new perspectives they may have never imagined. We are grateful to be able to share the work of these gifted storytellers to a wide audience."
POV episodes premiere Monday nights and will be available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.
