Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
American Winter: Families in Crisis
Directed by accomplished filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz, “American Winter” follows eight Oregon families who called the state’s 211 hotline for social services, seeking help in the winter of 2012. They have lost jobs, have had health crises and/or lost what they took to be secure investments.
For those of us who keep tabs of the myriad statistics which form a tragic picture of economic injustice in the United States, this film is a deeply painful confrontation with the pain and destruction wrought on the lives of the human beings victimized by this injustice. These are the traumatized voices and faces of our nation’s greed-motivated failings.
The filmmakers include interviews with bureaucrats and others whose work it is to serve their society which is now under siege. They know what has to happen fix this crisis, what can happen to prevent it in the future. To put it bluntly, they don’t have the power to make that change. Who does? It appears only the victimizers have it.
Like so many documentaries I’ve seen, this one touches our hearts and brings us to tears – and, perhaps, terrifies us as we imagine the façade of our existence melt away with just the opening of a letter, the answering of a phone call, or the walk into our employer’s office.