Rich Hill

Off Interstate 49 in Missouri sits Rich Hill, a town of fewer than fourteen hundred people. The documentary follows three teenage boys who live there. All three have broken families, temporary housing and no clear plan for the future. The camera does not ask you to pity them; it shows them as angry, stubborn kids who have not stopped imagining things. Directed together by Tracy Droz Tragos and Andrew Droz Palermo, the film was shot in the town their family comes from. That closeness shows in the telling: instead of an outside observer's distance, there is a camera that gets inside the house. It won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Who it's for: Viewers who like documentaries that approach American poverty through portraiture, and observational filmmaking. Who it's not for: The film offers no analysis. It shows lived experience without going into structural causes, which will feel incomplete if you want explanation.