Browse Movies : Completed : 2022 : Documentary : B

Based on true accounts, a Las Vegas escort is recognized by her sister in a viral social experiment video. Looking to reunite the sisters, and secretly motivated to capture the reunion on camera, Joey Salads and his apprehensive crew are thrown into the dangerous and corrupt world of escorting, documenting every step of their desperate effort to rescue the woman from human sex trafficking in Las Vegas.

Bad Axe captures a closely knit Asian-American family living in a rural Michigan community as they now fight to keep their American dream alive. As owners of a local prominent restaurant, they reckon with a global pandemic, racial tensions, and generational scars from Cambodia’s “killing fields.”

8-year-old Aaron Averhart was just a year shy of being able to move up from Cub Scout to Boy Scout when he received a special request from an admired Boy Scout leader William (Bill) Sheehan. As Aaron rose up the Boy Scout ranks he slowly became aware of Sheehan’s grooming techniques and began to realize he had much more sinister intentions in store for him.If Aaron’s parents had known that since the 1920s the Boy Scouts of America had been keeping hidden files on dangerous pedophiles in their ranks while failing to warn the public the police the scouts their parents or even fully removing them from the Boy Scouts program they would have never allowed young Aaron to be part of such a complicit and corrupt organization.Aaron now tells his four year harrowing account of the pain and horror he suffered at the hands of Boy Scout leader Bill Sheehan. After spending decades thinking he was alone a late night internet search for his abuser leads to the uncovering of dozens of additional victims in a town 1500 miles away.

Bitterbrush follows Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, range riders who are spending their last summer herding cattle in remote Idaho. Totally off the grid with only their dogs as companions, Hollyn and Colie brave inclement weather and perilous work conditions while pondering their futures. A portrait of friendship, life transitions, and the work of two skilled young women in the isolated and beautiful landscape of the American West, Bitterbrush is an intimate portrayal of a way of life rarely seen on film.

When the pandemic hit, drive-ins were suddenly the only safe venue in town, with press coverage about how drive-ins are “back,” and how they are thriving. But this documentary goes behind the headlines to learn the truth, spending a whole night with 11 very different drive-ins in 8 states all over the country, from preparations before the customers arrive, to selling tickets, opening the snack bar, and getting the movie on screen, we discover these family-owned businesses are actually struggling to survive. This doc is about authentic drive-ins and the passionate people who run them, but more broadly it highlights questions about the future of the theatrical experience, and the challenges of many small businesses wondering whether they will survive and make it to the other side of the pandemic.

There is no New York without Broadway. It’s both a landmark and a community, an industry and a people. During the pandemic, over 96,000 people lost their jobs, and an entire industry was brought to a standstill. Broadway Rising tells the story of the Broadway community and its harrowing journey back to the stage following the COVID-19 shutdown. Herculean challenges are not new to Broadway. It has weathered 9/11; the arrival of the motion picture industry; and the devastation of AIDS on a generation of artists. Even amidst the pandemic, many Broadway organizations helped forge a path towards racial equity in the wake of BLM movement. But when employees whose livelihoods depend upon Broadway found themselves unemployed – it was a steep hill to climb back to opening night. This is their story, from early quiet moments of anxiety and self-reflection, to the determination that “the show must go on,” and finally the triumph of September 12, 2021; opening night.