(featured image: “MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN”)

Middletown

Directors: Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine

Fred Isseks is the teacher so many teenagers never knew they needed.  In his multimedia course at New York’s Middletown High School, young adults learn not only how to operate cameras and broadcasting equipment but also the value of posing essential questions to civic leaders who would just as soon keep their mouths shut about the town’s toxic dump inconveniently sitting atop an aquifer that supplies the community drinking water.  Surprisingly—or not, given Middletown’s proximity to New York City—the town dump has functioned as a mob dumping ground for years, with all the right people paid off to look away.  Iseeks admits that this mission is dangerous (he relates several late-night calls informing him “stop!”), let alone for his students still in high school—yet his best lesson is one the students (for they are not “kids”) learn for themselves that is the best tradition of journalism: Persist and press forward, even if the world isn’t fair and there may not be any happy endings. 

Moss (“The Overnighters”) and McBaine (“Boys State”) weave together old tapes from the ’90s of Iseeks’ students crusade to get answers with contemporary footage of several of his former students, now in their 50s, recalling the life lessons Isseks provided both inside and outside the classroom.  Several saw the long-haired teacher—also interviewed by the filmmakers—as a surrogate parent, and now, as adults, they continue to ask the difficult questions.  (Some of the most touching scenes involve the former students smiling and cringing at old footage of themselves.) 

Intriguing and inspiring, “Middletown“ is a stark reminder of how graft and government too often coexist and that the best time to stop questioning the entire process is never. 

The Librarians

Director: Kim A. Snyder

Book burnings aren’t just for Nazi Germany anymore, as director Kim Snyder shows us grimly ecstatic 21st-century participants cheering as banned books meet the pyre.  Unsurprisingly, the director invokes Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”; from there, it gets more depressing.  Among Snyder’s subjects is an anonymous Texas librarian, seen only in silhouette, relating the hate she endured for supposedly “grooming“ schoolchildren.  The attacks on librarians are far from random: The campaigns put pressure on schools to remove books that are sympathetic, or even positive, toward the LGBTQ+ community as well as books by authors of color—spuriously labeling many as smut.  The books that aren’t burned are locked away, one librarian said, while another, herself an Army veteran, says she was fired for refusing to remove books dubbed “pornographic.“  She returns to her former library, where several of the so-called banned books are still easily found.  Another was fired for simply “asking questions“ about why books were being banned at all.

As Deep Throat supposedly told Bob Woodward to follow the money, here, too, the scandal can be traced back to well-heeled elements, notably the notorious Moms for Liberty associated with several conservative politicians and their allies clamoring about “parental rights.“  That’s really a dog whistle for White supremacy, in the opinion of one Black pastor, who relates hearing a local child screaming “I hate librarians,“ to which the pastor drearily muses, “this can’t be America.“  

One librarian, Martha Hickson, is from Hunterdon County, my home county in New Jersey.  (She is the librarian for my high school’s football “rival.”)  Hickson relates how a student came in seeking a book on a same-sex relationship, only to have the student’s angry mother confront her.  She describes that while being called a “groomer“ and other such epithets at a school board meeting, her superintendents sat silently and did nothing.  Doing some digging, Hickson discovers this is straight out of the Moms for Liberty playbook—and by following the money, she finds that this particular group includes one of the largest funders of the “Stop the Steal“ rally.  The money never lies. 

And the bad news continues.  One ally of the book-banning effort took it upon herself to read about the supposed porn in school books but found none.  She was told to shut up; then her former allies came after her too (in a touching moment, she says friends slept on her front porch should threats materialize).  A young man who comes out as gay has a mother who is one of the most vocal book-banners.  He tearfully says at a town hall that his family has cut him off.  His mother speaks right after her son, who is still on the warpath.  They cross paths on camera but do not speak. 

This crusade is working only too well.   Even though the Black pastor says “this can’t be America,“ it is where we are.  But no matter how many books they ban or burn, the hunger for knowledge will always continue.  (Oh, and there’s also Google Books!)

Sunset and the Mockingbird

Director: Jyllian Gunther

Junior Mance played with Dizzy Gillespie and many other jazz greats in the ’60s, and director Jyllian Gunther chronicles his later years as dementia affects not only himself but his family.  His wife, Gloria Clayborne, also his manager, keeps a journal on his condition, which only worsens.  Like Tony Bennett, the musical memories are still in there, even as Mance starts to blank out on stage.  Then, the mistakes affect recording sessions, and even Mance’s supportive session musicians tell Gloria that recording for Junior is no longer possible.  She tearfully replies that she is mentally preparing for the day he can no longer play.

Affecting and tenderly realized by Gunther, “Sunset and the Mockingbird“ is a portrait not only of dementia but of those individuals who must continue to care not only for the patient but also look after their own well-being.  Bring tissues (stay tuned for my interview with Clayborne and Gunther.)

Predators

Director: David Osit

“To Catch a Predator“ was appointment television in the early years of this century, but “Predators“ argues that, in hindsight, the show was far more entertaining than a do-gooder crusade.  Sure, the show benefited from the marks being surprised on-camera when host Chris Hansen entered the frame to reveal that the underage girl they have been talking to is, in fact, an actress of legal age. Still, despite the uncomfortable weeping and splashy arrest footage that followed, none of this was admissible in court—particularly as Hanson was not in law enforcement, and anything he coaxed from the marks on-camera was spoken without legal counsel present.  We also learn of one of Hansen’s recent cases involving an eighteen-year-old boy who was entrapped for meeting with someone he thought was sixteen—still illegal in many states. Still, the boy’s mother and Osit seem to argue there is a vast difference between this and fully grown men preying on the underaged. 

Director David Osit reveals he, too, was victimized as a child, and thus, his questions posed are difficult ones: Did the show help anyone?  Hanson, now 65 and still at the same game of predator-pursuit for another outlet, sits down with Osit.  Understandably, Hanson defends his work, even as many copycat Internet shows by self-appointed detectives apply ambush-style tactics to get clicks and likes.  Several TCAP staff who acted as bait look back with a certain grimace—with one even saying he would have thought twice if he’d known one of the “caught“ predators he helped nab would commit suicide as law enforcement approached.  Even a hardened Kentucky prosecutor, who gleefully tells Osit he would have shot the suspects himself, is shown B-roll of them in custody weeping desperately and penitent.  The prosecutor changes his tune, however slightly, at this common humanity. 

It is this humanity that Osit regards as the most tragic aspect of “To Catch a Predator“ and its legacy.  As a survivor himself, he views those who prey on the young certainly as criminally and morally deviant but nonetheless still deserving of understanding.  The doc provides no easy answers as to “why“ some people prey on children, for what possible reason would lead to sympathy.  Osit’s face, finally coming out from behind his camera, is the last image we see.  His face, haunted and his eyes inquisitive and somehow helpful, seems no closer to closure than before. 

WTO/99

Director: Ian Bell

Ian Bell uses only archive footage to show us the protests that engulfed Seattle late in 1999 as the World Trade Organization conference came to town.  This is immersive, verite-style filmmaking, and the former police chief of Seattle appears in modern news footage over the credits saying his department likely overreacted in 1999—and thus is a valuable reminder for the tense relationship with law enforcement that still exists in 2025.  However, Bell also undermines himself slightly during said credits with an awkward transition to 9/11 footage to decry the loss of momentum of the protest movement.  I wish he’d kept it to the Seattle ’99 footage, but that is my sole complaint about this enveloping documentary. 

Remaining Native

Director: Paige Bethmann

Kutoven Stephens is a runner from Nevada’s Paiute community with his eyes set squarely on the University of Oregon, the same school where Steve Prefontaine earned so much recognition.  Throughout his extensive training, Kutoven also reflects on the legacy of his great-grandfather Frank Quinn, who escaped twice from one of the notorious Indian schools that sought to strip Native peoples of their identity.  While preparing to become a college athlete himself, Kutoven and supporters from his community retrace his ancestor’s 50-mile run through punishing high desert country, which has since become an annual event.  “Remaining Native“ is as much a meditation on the ongoing debate about the wrongs done to this continent’s native peoples as it is an exploration of how descendants such as Kutoven even now walk the line being both a Native and an American. 

The Stringer

Director: Bao Nyugen

The 1972 “Napalm Girl“ photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old girl running from her burning home during the Vietnam War, remains one of the most iconic of the 20th century.  Nick Út, who was just twenty at the time, made a career and earned prize after prize for taking the infamous photo…or did he?  This intriguing investigative film from Bao Nyugen (“Be Water,” “The Greatest Night in Pop”) introduces us to Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, who has for decades claimed it was he, not Út, who took the photo.  Even with many of the on-the-ground witnesses now elderly or deceased, Nyugen upspools his story with a careful pacing as his subjects seek to right what they view as a grievous wrong—one of so many visited upon Vietnam in that horrific war.  (Út declined to appear in the film.) 

The Shadow Scholars

Director: Eloïse King

Before ChatGPT revolutionized the world, an entire shadow industry of paper writers in Kenya worked for college students, particularly in America, as scribes-for-hire.  Oxford professor Patricia Kingori of the University of Oxford has done a great deal of research on this pay-for scheme, and she serves as a guide to these “shadow scholars”—many of whom are well-educated Kenyans with few job prospects who ghostwrite academic papers just to make ends meet.  Then came AI, which threatened their livelihood. 

Kingori, who is Nigerian-British, doesn’t seek to condemn but rather to understand.  As the youngest Black professor in Oxford’s history, she knows well the sting of having her work questioned by others as perhaps illegitimate.  However, she doesn’t blame those who “help“ other students write as a means of survival.  

2000 Meters to Andriivka

Director: Mstyslav Chernov

The war in Ukraine feels no sooner to ending now than in 2022, and its sheer gruesomeness is reminiscent of the World War I.  What makes it different is the cameras that Ukrainian soldiers of the 3rd Assault Brigade wear on their helmets, providing a first-person view of the combat as a team of brave men attempt to retake the village of Andriivka in the Donetsk region.  Gaining inches at a time in a vicious counteroffensive, the soldiers continue suffering casualties as they press toward the town, which has been leveled in the fighting.  One of the doc’s most harrowing moments sees a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier asking a captured Russian if he thinks it was the teenager’s ambition to be fighting.  The tired and wounded Russian soldier’s burning response:  “I don’t know why we came here.“  Incredibly, the soldiers even find and adopt a live cat that somehow has survived the village’s ruins—shortly before planting a Ukrainian flag in what was once the town’s center. 

Diplomats and heads of state continue to try and bring this terrible war to an end, but the longer it goes on, the more young men will be slaughtered thanks to Putin’s folly.  Meanwhile, “2000 Meters to Andriivka“ is another triumph from Oscar-winner Mstyslav Chernov (“20 Days in Mariupol”), featuring a rather haunting musical score by Sam Slater. 

The Alabama Solution

Director: Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman

If people saw how horrendous the prison conditions in America are, would they clamor for change?  Unlikely, but the filmmakers nonetheless show us what is going on at a notorious Alabama prison where inmates are made to sleep on floors, chemicals leak, food is rotten, and murders on the inside are a feature, not a bug.  Officers beat to death inmate Stephen Davis, and his family wants answers.  The officers circle the wagons, claiming the man attacked them, but inmates say otherwise…however, those who say so must be careful lest they put a target on their backs.  Incredibly, Davis’s cellmate, who was ready to talk, turns up dead in his cell just before his release. 

We learn the state has spent $51 million in the past half-decade protecting officers accused of official misconduct—and that, in Alabama alone, prison labor (nearly all of it unpaid) produces nearly a half-billion-dollars’ worth of goods annually.  To protest, the inmates at all the state’s prisons stage a strike over beatings and untenable living conditions, which Gov. Kay Ivey labels “unreasonable.“ 

Steven Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, gets his time to explain the state’s side, which is nothing if not consistent with the official narrative.

Facing War

Director: Tommy Gulliksen

Tommy Gulliksen and his team travel with Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg during his final months on the job as NATO secretary-general.  With the weight of the world—and especially Ukraine—on his shoulders, Stoltenberg jets from city to city, shaking hands and cajoling allies to accept hopeful entrants Finland and Sweden, who are understandably worried about Russian expansion.  How Stoltenberg maintains his composure and his optimism is perhaps the film’s most mysterious question, as Vladimir Putin’s campaign continues and Volodymyr Zelensky begs the West for more help.   (Putin candidly refuses to sit for talks, a problem that continues.)  Although he is unseen, Donald Trump’s presence in “Facing War“ is never far off, with his predecessor Joe Biden seen doing the work but, unfortunately, stumbling—as was his habit (including once referring, on camera, to Zelensky as “Putin”).  Stoltenberg is now back home in Norway, serving as the minister of finance, but the work he took on for a decade at NATO has never been more urgent. 

Folktales

Director: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

In a unique coaching program, teens learn how to dog-sled and survive in Norway’s Arctic north.  The troubles these teens are dealing with run the gamut, but by learning to work with the sled dogs and coming to appreciate the value of working as a team, they find that there is indeed hope.  One young participant says that so many people want to be teenagers again (not me, thank you) but he also reminds us that the teen years are incredibly difficult.  Anything that can help with the incredibly confusing time of adolescence, especially if it involves dogs, is a good thing. 

Underland

Director: Robert Petit

English director Robert Petit looks at lives lived underground, from antiquity in Mexico and England to contemporary Las Vegas.  His camera follows spelunkers exploring caves formed naturally, as well as those carved out by man for government research, uranium mining and labs studying dark matter.  The Mexican spelunkers’ Maya ancestors sometimes lived underground, we are told, and it’s a short leap to the idea of the destitute living beneath the Vegas streets in the 21st century, with the Vegas explorer observing that “people live down here who don’t have homes at the surface, or need to escape the heat and the constant surveillance by police.”

“Underland“ is trippy at times, answering a question we didn’t know we had: What would “2001“ look like if it had happened underground?  (You’ll understand why.)  Indeed, Petit acknowledged to me his fondness for the Kubrick film prior to our Q&A at DC/DOX on Friday. 

River of Grass

Director: Sasha Wortzel

Florida is sinking and losing land faster than almost anywhere on Earth, yet its population continues to explode even as the waters claw back the land.  After a particularly devastating hurricane, Wortzel dreams of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the environmentalist who crusaded to save the Everglades from overdevelopment before dying at the incredible age of 108.  (If the name sounds familiar, yes, the high school where the Parkland 2018 shooting took place was named for her.)  Wortzel uses Douglas’s seminal book “The Everglades: River of Grass“ as the jumping-off point for an unusual journey into the Everglades, which continues to be so important to Florida’s Native communities, represented prominently in the film by Miccosukee educator Betty Osceola.

“Man’s life on earth is limited by the conflict between his stupidity and his intelligence,“ Douglas observed, and as we continue to spit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it’s hard to argue. 

(I led a post-screening Q&A Saturday.)

Andy Kaufman Is Me

Director: Clay Tweel

Love him or not, Andy Kaufman changed what comedy could be.  The mercurial Long Island native, by sheer force of will, got into New York’s nightclubs and eventually brought his bizarre humor into America’s homes thanks to appearances on “Saturday Night Live“ and elsewhere.  Director Clay Tweel (last year’s “A Bitter Pill”) splices vintage footage and excerpts from Kaufman’s audio diaries with new interviews with Andy’s brother Michael and sister Carol, as well as his friends and admirers.  Tweel also uses puppets, including of Howdy Doody, to “animate“ audio clips of Andy reading excerpts from his surreal book “The Huey Williams Story,“ of which Kaufman no doubt would be proud.

David Letterman, an executive producer, appears on camera to discuss the notorious faux-feud between Kaufman and pro wrestler Jerry “The King“ Lawler, which included the infamous slap that happened on Letterman’s show. 

Tweel and I spoke during a post-screening Q&A, which took a rather strange turn.  Read more about it in my expanded coverage. 

Deepfaking Sam Altman

Director: Adam Bhala Lough

When filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough (“Telemarketers”) is unsuccessful in getting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on camera, he does the next-best thing and creates an AI version, called “Sam-bot.“  He develops an attachment to Sam-bot, not dissimilar to how other people are becoming enamored of their AI programs.  He even gets legal counsel to determine what would happen if he kept Sam-bot but it fell into the wrong hands: It could become litigious if Sam-bot started insisting it was Altman and sold Ford cars, for example.  His lawyers advise him that the film itself cannot be released unless he deletes Sam-bot and all “his“ related programming.  “What I didn’t expect was for Sam-bot to plead for its own life,“ Lough observes at one strange moment. 

Yet Lough, despite his attachment to Sam-bot, reminds himself that his real-life family is far more important—including working through the grief his young son experiences when the family hamster dies in the film’s single most touching moment. 

The Last Class

Director: Elliott Kirschner

Rober Reich, secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, is due to retire from his teaching job at Berkeley, but the wide gulf between rich and poor he discussed will long remain.  Prior to his final lecture, he says that retiring from teaching after four decades is “a real loss,“ acknowledging freely that in the autumn of his life, there is far more looking back than forward.  However, that is the nature of things, and his next chapter will be as much about accepting that reality as finding his purpose in retirement.  We should all be so lucky.

The end montage over closing credits showcases his many TV appearances, not just on crossfire-style talk shows to explain wonky economic concepts but also appearing as himself on “The Simpsons“ and with Conan O’Brien.

Apocalypse in the Tropics

Director: Petra Costa

The United States hasn’t cornered the market on right-wing religious groups who see in strongman leaders the promise of final judgment.  And so to Brazil we go, where evangelicals are playing an increasing role in a rising right wing in Brasilia—up to and including a Jan. 6-style raid on the government when Jair Bolsonaro is defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022.  Up to nearly a third of the population is evangelical now, we learn; coincidentally or otherwise, Brazil also suffered nearly 700,000 deaths from covid, the second-highest toll on Earth (bested only by the United States).  Rather than use subtitles, director Petra Costa has dubbed in English reading by actors of what the Brazilian people are saying—and thus Americans can hear, in their own language, the feverish, apocalyptic beliefs that, spurred on by wannabe dictators, result in sieges on national seats of government, whether in America (as in United States of) or South America. 

Holding Liat

Director: Brandon Kramer

Israeli-American couple Liat and Aviv Atzili were kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, and the filmmakers

document Liat’s family’s attempts to get their loved ones back. The family visits politicians in D.C., and one of the most surreal scenes there sees the father, Yehuda, meeting with a Palestinian activist in the depths of the Capitol.  Though sympathetic to the young man’s attempts to work together on a ceasefire and return the hostagers, Yehuda whispers that he cannot speak as freely on camera as he would like given the group sponsoring him.  Yehuda’s brother Joel, in Oregon, has a nuanced view of the conflict, including coming to see that the kibbutz he grew up on was built upon the ruins of several Palestinian villages.  (He asks his brother, “Do you want a new Hammas?”)  Yehuda and his wife disagree, rather vocally, on camera about the best way to get their family out of Gaza. 

Liat is released, but Aviv does not survive his captivity.  Somehow, Liat, after her graveside eulogy, manages to play one of Aviv’s songs to get everyone dancing.  Liat shares that she is angered by her captors yet doesn’t wish to see humanitarian aid into Gaza blocked.  On a radio program she relates how her captors’ family cared for her, saying their job was to keep her safe until a hostage-exchange deal was reached.  (Understandably, the hostess of the show calls this “really confusing.”)  Liat also relates that Aviv once told her, “If you think what’s happening to you is bad in your life, think about what is happening on the other side of the fence.“  Now, she says at the end of the film, she knows…only too well.    

The Right Track

Director: Shareen Anderson

The Love Ranch, formerly owned by Dennis Hof in Nevada, is run by a madam, who tells us she is the longest-serving madam in the world.  She says sex work empowers women, but many disagree, citing poverty and severe lack of opportunity as risk factors.  For one, why are the trafficked women often arrested, but the “buyers,“ as they call them, often receive no punishment at all?  One interviewee calls it the world’s oldest “oppression,“ not “profession,“ so is decriminalization the answer? 

New laws are putting the criminal blame on the buyers rather than the sex workers, a step in the right direction.  In one incredible scene, several of the trafficked women cheer as the Love Ranch is bulldozed to the ground.  Meanwhile, other former sex workers give those still in the life a safe place to go.  This can be difficult as pimps aren’t usually known for being open to the idea.  Indeed, “loyalty“ is used as a “badge of honor“ in the trade, we are told.  (Remind you of anyone?) 

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House

Director: Elegance Bratton

House music was especially great for Chicago’s gay community‚ and its underground clubs helped break down color barriers that were so entrenched throughout this supposedly liberal city.  One interviewee refers to this as “democracy on the dance floor.“  When a disco-record-destroying event at Comiskey Park turned violent, because it sought to stamp out Black music, many viewed this as yet another form of repression.  One young man recollects being beaten up in a White neighborhood, and the sheriff essentially offering him $800 not to press charges—which he took to purchase his synthesizer.  (Judge at your own peril.)  Yet another recalls being signed to a record deal, then dropped, only to have house music become the next best thing later on.  EDM only became popular when it appealed to White audiences.  Same old story.  Yet again. 

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Director: David Borenstein

Pasha Talankin teaches at a Russian school in the “most toxic-polluted place on Earth“ when Ukraine is invaded.  As the school’s videographer, he must record state-sponsored lecture material to ensure teachers toe the party line.  Talankin has a “democracy“ flag in his classroom, not the traditional Russian tri-color, which is just the beginning of his troubles.  Talankin also makes home movies documenting his umbrage with Putin’s insanity, and soon resigns as the school videographer.  At first, at least publicly, he “goes along“ with the narrative, if only to save his own skin, but seeing his raw footage mutated into Putin propaganda is the last straw. 

A film crew in Europe reaches out, so he rescinds his resignation to continue making a movie from inside the school.  His first major act of defiance is broadcasting Lady Gaga’s rendition of the national anthem from his school’s rooftop, then later turns the “Z“ tape outlines on school windows—a symbol of support for Putin—into X’s.  By contrast, the history teacher suckup gets a new apartment.  Military personnel show up at the school to teach the “values“ of serving in the armed forces.  Soon enough, Talankin realizes it’s time to leave.  He flees the very day after giving the graduation speech. 

His footage provides a peek behind the curtain of Russian state propaganda.  He has done the world a service indeed.

Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything

Director: Jackie Jesko

That it was difficult for women in the all-boys club of big media is not in doubt, and yet Barbara Walters gracefully tackled every insult and snide remark to thrive as the premier one-on-one interviewer.  Jesko’s film features archival footage and audio clips of Walters, who died in 2022, along with new interviews with professional colleagues such as Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey and also some of Walters’s biggest “gets,“ including Monica Lewinsky, who reflects back on that blockbuster TV interview from 1999.  The gossip is there—certainly in discussions of Walters’s high-profile paramours—but so too are discussions of her strained relationship with her adopted daughter, Jackie.  It all adds up to a fascinating portrait of a self-made media pioneer.

Coach

Directors: Clifford and Griffin Nash

Appropriate for DC/DOX was this short doc about Washington Capitols’ star TJ Oshie, whose father Tim Sr., known colloquially as “Coach,“ moved young TJ from Washington state to Warroad, Minnesota, so TJ could get in the necessary practice and experience to make it to the NHL.  But just as Oshie’s career is ascendant, Coach is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.  However, even as Coach fades, he is able to see his son go all the way to the Stanley Cup in 2018 with the Caps and also play in the All-Star Game.  Oshie speaks to camera not only of caring for his father but also the existential terror at testing himself to determine if he too has the mutated gene—which he worries about passing on to his own children.  Oshie speaking publicly about Coach’s struggles has helped raise Alzheimer’s awareness, and even amid his grief he is able to score a hat trick in his first game back with the Caps—which Coach would no doubt cheer on. 

Your Opinion, Please

Director: Marshall Granger

This intriguing short offers a peek at a unique radio program hosted by Marvin Granger and Ken Siebert out of Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana.  The hosts invite callers to discuss, well, whatever is on their minds.  The callers aren’t seen, nor is the studio.  Instead co-host and filmmaker Granger provides a travelogue of Big Sky Country: towns, main streets, buffalo herds, abandoned factories, people fishing, and, of course, the mountains.  Composer Mike Forst provides a soothing score behind the images as Montanans of all stripes chat about a wide array of topics with Granger and Siebert. 

Classroom 4

Director: Eden Wurmfeld

Professor Reiko Hillyer at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon runs a unique 15-week course that pairs her students with people incarcerated at a nearby prison.  Through this exchange, both the jailed and the free learn about and from one another in a most unusual way.