Film

Public Trust

A sharp-eyed documentary that traces how America's 640 million acres of public land—legally ours—are being quietly transferred to corporations and stripped for profit. Byars travels to Alaska, Utah, and Minnesota to show the fight happening now, the stakes clear and immediate. Essential viewing for anyone who thought public meant protected.

If you liked this

The Biggest Little Farm2019

A couple transforms degraded California farmland into a thriving ecosystem, proving regeneration is possible. Gorgeously shot, genuinely moving, and offers hope without being naive about the work involved.

But The pacing is leisurely and meditative; if you want quick answers and faster cuts, this won't grab you immediately.

The Biggest Little Farm poster

Gasland2010

Josh Fox investigates hydraulic fracturing's impact on American water and land. Urgent, clearly constructed, and functions as both personal journey and investigative thriller—you'll understand the stakes immediately.

But The emotional intensity is relentless and the conclusions are bleak. It's a difficult watch about real damage.

Gasland poster

We the Animals2018

A lyrical documentary about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Poetic filmmaking that captures both the grandeur of land and the intimacy of resistance.

But Deliberately artistic and impressionistic rather than straightforward; it privileges feeling over exposition.

We the Animals poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both examine the legal and social machinery that determines who can actually possess and protect land—and how much of it depends on being the right kind of person in the eyes of power.

Maggie Greenwald's western about a woman who passes as a man to survive in the frontier—owns land, lives free, exists unmolested only in disguise. A period film that interrogates who gets to claim the land and on what terms.

But It's a strange, slow indie from the nineties with no major stars. The tone is deliberately flat and the violence is quiet. It feels more like a painting than a conventional drama.

The Ballad of Little Jo poster
More like this (3)

Manufactured Landscapes2006

Edward Burtynsky's photographs of industrial landscapes—mines, factories, waste—become the basis for meditation on extraction and beauty. Visually stunning and intellectually rigorous about scale and consequence.

But It's a gallery film first and a documentary second. There's no villain, no narrative arc, just images demanding your interpretation.

Manufactured Landscapes poster

Alt-Right: Age of Rage2018

Investigates the ideological underpinnings of the movement that often frames public-lands exploitation in patriotic terms. Necessary context for understanding the political dimension of land conflicts in America.

But Dense and unflinching examination of extremist ideology; emotionally taxing and intentionally uncomfortable.

Alt-Right: Age of Rage poster

Killers of the Flower Moon2023

Both document how America's systems ensure indigenous and public interests lose to private wealth extraction. Public Trust is investigation; this is historical reckoning—same machinery, different decade and medium.

Scorsese's film about Osage oil wealth and the serial murders that followed isn't about environmental extraction, but about resource extraction and the violent erasure of indigenous claim to land and money. Historical, furious, operatic.

But Three-and-a-half hours. Period crime drama, not activism. Some will find Scorsese's stylistic flourishes feel inappropriate to the material. The ending is grim without redemption.

Killers of the Flower Moon poster

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