Independent Lens: Season 23
Season 23 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of Independent Lens Season 22.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 23 Progress Shield
Cured
Oct 11, 2021 · 60 min
When doctors classified homosexuality as a mental illness to be “cured,” they employed cruel treatments like electroshock and lobotomies. LGBTQ+ activists and their allies fought b
Ferguson Rises
Nov 8, 2021 · 60 min
How does a father find purpose in pain? In 2014, Michael Brown Sr.’s son was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that fueled the global Bla
Storm Lake
Nov 15, 2021 · 60 min
Does American democracy survive without the backbone of independent local journalism? Go inside The Storm Lake Times, a newspaper serving an Iowa town that has seen its fair share
Duty Free
Nov 22, 2021 · 60 min
75-year-old Rebecca loses the only job she's even known. She has no savings, no 401K safety net, and no employment prospects. Rebecca teams up with son Sian-Pierre to take the trip
Home From School: The Children of Carlisle
Nov 23, 2021 · 60 min
"Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” This was the guiding principle that removed thousands of Native American children and placed them in Indian boarding schools. Among the
A Reckoning in Boston
Jan 17, 2022 · 60 min
What happens when you discover that your assumptions are flawed? A white filmmaker starts his academic inquiry by documenting low-income, adult students of color at the Clemente Co
Missing in Brooks County
Jan 31, 2022 · 60 min
Migrants go missing in rural South Texas more than anywhere else in the U.S. For many families whose loved ones have disappeared after crossing the Mexico border, activist detectiv
Owned: A Tale of Two Americas
Feb 7, 2022 · 60 min
Is the "American Dream" of home ownership a false promise? While the government’s postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class, it also set America on two diverg
Bulletproof
Feb 14, 2022 · 60 min
What is the cost of feeling safe? In an era of mass shootings, lockdown drills and teacher firearms training are as much a part of life as homecoming dances and basketball practice
Apart
Feb 21, 2022 · 60 min
Since the beginning of the War on Drugs, the number of women in U.S. prisons has grown drastically. The majority are mothers. Three unforgettable formerly incarcerated mothers, jai
Writing With Fire
Mar 28, 2022 · 60 min
In a male-dominated media landscape, the women journalists of India's all-female Khabar Lahariya ("News Wave") newspaper risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the count
AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
Apr 4, 2022 · 86 min
What is the science behind consciousness? Six brilliant researchers from around the world—a brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics s
Try Harder!
May 2, 2022 · 83 min
At Lowell High School, San Francisco's academic pressure cooker, the kids are stressed out. With a majority Asian American student body, high-achieving seniors share their dreams a
When Claude Got Shot
May 9, 2022
In Milwaukee, a 15-year-old attempted to carjack law student Claude Motley and shot him in the face. Through multiple surgeries and catastrophic health care bills, the effects of g
Scenes From The Glittering World
May 16, 2022 · 56 min
Three Indigenous students experience the highs and lows of adolescence while attending one of the most remote high schools in the United States. Living in the uniquely beautiful bu