Sara Newens Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Addie Morfoot Contributor Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” will kick off the winter season of PBS documentary series “Independent Lens” on Jan. 9. Using hidden camera footage, the 115-minute doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor How can trees be racist? That’s the question explored in a new documentary, “Racist Trees,” about a historically Black neighborhood called the Crossley tract in Palm Springs, Calif., whose residents suspected a dense row of tall tamarisk trees might have been planted decades ago to segregate them from the adjacent golf course. While putting a close-up on the residents’ campaign to have the messy, view-blocking trees removed, the film deftly explores wider issues, like the troubled racial history of the idyllic resort town, gentrification and generational wealth – all with a light touch that includes plenty of colorful historic footage of swimming pools and movie stars.

Film Independent has set the filmmakers and projects for its 2022 Documentary Lab. The list includes Alissa Figueroa (Breaking the Blue Wall, w/t), Shalon Buskirk and Drew Swedberg (In love, in memory), Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir (Land of Women), Kit Vincent and Ed Owles (Red Herring, w/t), Alix Blair, Lauren Kushner and Elise McCave (Untitled Helen Project) and Jonathan Olshefski and Elizabeth Day (Without Arrows).