The Best Episodes of Independent Lens

#1 Fan Favorite
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9.3/10(59 votes)
#1 - Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life
S8:E142/6/2007
As Duke Ellington's co-composer, arranger, and right-hand man, Billy Strayhorn wrote some of the greatest American music of the 20th century. But as a gay man in the ’40s and ’50s, Strayhorn had to lead a discreet existence, while Ellington played to thunderous applause on center stage.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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9.2/10(22 votes)
#2 - Almost Home
S7:E152/21/2006
Almost Home rescues from an exile of denial the real stories of aging that lie in the vast middle between the uber-heroic octogenarian marathoner and the feeble geriatric that most Americans fear becoming. A feature length, cinema-verité film shot on location in a continuing care community that boasts a nursing home transforming its medical (think hospital) model of care into a holistic one (think home), Almost Home is a stunningly intimate film that combines the institution’s struggle to shake the nursing home stigma with tender, sometimes difficult, stories of people who live, work and visit there.
Directors:Brad Lichtenstein, Lisa Gildehaus
Writer:Unknown
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Directors:Brad Lichtenstein, Lisa Gildehaus
Writer:Unknown
9.2/10(28 votes)
#3 - Fishbowl; American Made
S7:E235/9/2006
No description available
Director:Unknown
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9.0/10(16 votes)
#4 - Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City
S7:E183/28/2006
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Director:Unknown
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Director:Unknown
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8.9/10(19 votes)
#5 - India's Daughter
S17:E211/16/2015
The story of the brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh, which sparked outrage and protests in India, a country beset by extreme poverty and gender inequality.
Director:Leslee Udwin
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Leslee Udwin
Writer:Unknown
8.8/10(10 votes)
#6 - Jiro Dreams of Sushi
S15:E612/23/2013
Eighty-five-year-old Jiro Ono, considered the world’s greatest sushi chef, is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway station. Despite its humble appearance, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a three-star Michelin Guide rating, and sushi lovers from around the globe make pilgrimages. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family and the art of perfection. By David Gelb.
Director:Unknown
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The 20 WORST Episodes of Independent Lens

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8.8/10(9 votes)
#7 - Bully
S16:E110/13/2014
The story of the children bullied at school and online. The film questions assumptions about bullying behaviour beyond cliches and stereotypes of the past. It also examines changes in how schools treat the perpetrators and victims.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.8/10(6 votes)
#8 - Love in the Time of Fentanyl
S24:E92/13/2023
As fentanyl overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada reach an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society opens its doors—a renegade safe injection site that employs current or former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community, doing whatever it takes to remain open in this intimate documentary that looks beyond the stigma of injection drug users.
Director:Unknown
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8.7/10(8 votes)
#9 - China Blue
S8:E204/3/2007
They live crowded together in cement factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets. Their meals and rent are deducted from their wages, which amount to less than a dollar a day. Most of the jeans they make in the factory are purchased by retailers in the U.S. and other countries. China Blue takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. Providing perspectives from both the top and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization from the human level. China Blue, which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made—and kept—in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.7/10(21 votes)
#10 - The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
S17:E102/16/2016
Weaving together a treasure trove of rare footage with the voices of a diverse group of people who were there, Stanley Nelson tells the vibrant story of a pivotal movement as urgent today as it was then.
Director:Unknown
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8.7/10(19 votes)
#11 - Free For All: The Public Library
S26:E164/29/2025
Free For All: The Public Library tells the story of the quiet revolutionaries who made a simple idea happen. From the pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” to today's librarians who service the public despite working in a contentious age of closures and book bans, meet those who created a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.6/10(10 votes)
#12 - July '64
S7:E142/14/2006
July ’64 tells the story of a historic three-day race riot that erupted in two African American neighborhoods in the northern, mid-sized city of Rochester, New York. On the night of July 24, 1964, frustration and resentment brought on by institutional racism, overcrowding, lack of job opportunity and police dog attacks exploded in racial violence that brought Rochester to its knees. Directed by Carvin Eison and produced by Chris Christopher, JULY ’64 combines historic archival footage, news reports and interviews with witnesses and participants to dig deeply into the causes and effects of the historic disturbance.
Director:Carvin Eison
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Carvin Eison
Writer:Unknown
8.6/10(53 votes)
#13 - Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
S8:E162/20/2007
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a 2006 documentary film written, produced, and directed by Byron Hurt. The documentary explores the issues of masculinity, violence, homophobia and sexism in hip hop music and culture, through interviews with artists, academics and fans. Hurt's activism in gender issues and his love of hip-hop caused him to feel what he described as a sense of hypocrisy, and began working on the film.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.6/10(20 votes)
#14 - Muscle Shoals
S15:E173/31/2014
How a small town in Alabama became influential in the music of Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Aretha Franklin.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.6/10(8 votes)
#15 - Matter of Mind: My ALS
S24:E135/1/2023
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease with an average survival time of 2-5 years from diagnosis. In this intimate exploration, three people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, bravely face different paths as they live with this progressively debilitating illness.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.6/10(17 votes)
#16 - Beyond Utopia
S25:E71/9/2024
They grew up believing their land was paradise. Now, they risk everything in escaping it. In an unforgettable documentary, follow families on a treacherous journey to defect from their homeland of North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and possible execution looms over their passage, revealing a world many have never seen.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.6/10(17 votes)
#17 - The Librarians
S27:E52/9/2026
Librarians across the U.S. examine how restrictions on library content are shaping communities. Drawing on historical context, the film explores the broader implications for education and public life.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.5/10(47 votes)
#18 - A Touch of Greatness
S6:E101/11/2005
No description available
Director:Unknown
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8.5/10(14 votes)
#19 - Race to Execution
S8:E193/27/2007
Race discrimination infects America’s capital punishment system. According to a landmark study regarding race and the death penalty, a black defendant who kills a white victim is up to 30 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a white defendant who kills a black victim. RACE TO EXECUTION, a film by Rachel Lyon, traces the fates of two death row inmates, Robert Tarver in Russell County, Alabama and Madison Hobley in Chicago, Illinois. Their compelling personal stories are enlarged and enriched by attorneys who fought for these men’s lives, and by prosecutors, criminal justice scholars and experts in the fields of law and the media. RACE TO EXECUTION reveals how, beyond DNA and the issue of innocence, the shameful open secret of America's capital punishment system is a matter of race. Once a victim’s body is discovered, his or her race—and the race of the accused—deeply influence the legal process: how a crime scene is investigated and the deployment of police resources, the interrogation and arrest of major suspects, how the media portrays the crime and ultimately, the jury selection and sentencing. Hugh Kite, a white man, general store owner and mainstay of his rural Alabama community, was murdered during the course of a robbery on September 15, 1984. Less than four months after Kite was murdered, Robert Tarver, a black man, was sentenced to die. The prosecutor at Tarver’s trial rejected all but one of the African Americans qualified for jury service. Eleven white Alabamans and one African American composed Tarver’s “jury of his peers.” And as prosecutors have long known, a trial can turn on who is sitting in the jury box. Recent research indicates the extent to which the make-up of the jury affects sentencing: when five or more white males sit on a capital trial jury, there is a 70 percent chance of a death penalty outcome. If there are four or fewer white males, the chance of a death sentence is only 30 percent. Whether in the rural South or the inner city North, virtually all-white juries are commonplace—and potentially lethal to black defendants. In 1987, in Chicago, Madison Hobley, a young black medical technician married to his high school sweetheart, lost his wife and son in an apartment house blaze. Hobley was accused of setting the fire. Police officers claimed that Hobley had signed a written confession but that spilled coffee had destroyed the document. A panel consisting of 11 white jurors and one African American juror convicted Madison Hobley and sentenced him to die. With key 2005 Supreme Court decisions overturning death sentences in Texas and California due to racial discrimination in jury selection, RACE TO EXECUTION offers a timely analysis. The film examines the subtle yet persistent ways in which American culture consistently overlooks matters of race in criminal justice. Neither advocating nor repudiating capital punishment, the film catalyzes dialogues about the inherent imbalances that lead to inaccuracy and unfairness in the application of the “ultimate punishment.” The film concludes with the exoneration of one man and the execution of another. In both cases, race is a factor impossible to avoid. Yet there are signs that the death penalty is being used less often in the United States and scrutinized differently than it was even five years ago. The Supreme Court heard five death penalty cases in 2005 alone. Is this progress, or are recent reforms still inadequate? The varied voices heard in RACE TO EXECUTION contribute to a thoughtful examination of the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state.
Director:Unknown
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8.5/10(7 votes)
#20 - We Were Here
S13:E266/7/2012
When AIDS arrived in San Francisco in 1981, it decimated a community, but also brought people together in inspiring and moving ways to support and care for one another and to fight for dignity and a cure.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.5/10(24 votes)
#21 - Twin Sisters
S16:E210/20/2014
Two sisters adopted in China as infants by Californian and Norwegian parents grow up knowing they have a twin living on the other side of the world. Although language is a barrier, their bond grows deeper and they arrange to finally meet.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.5/10(29 votes)
#22 - American Denial
S16:E102/23/2015
In the wake of recent events that have sparked a national dialogue, American Denial explores the power of unconscious biases around race and class. Using Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 investigation of Jim Crow racism as a springboard, the film shows how unrecognized, unconscious attitudes continue to dominate racial dynamics in American life.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
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8.4/10(52 votes)
#23 - Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
S8:E172/27/2007
Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is a 2006 documentary film written by Matt Coen, Mike Kime and Frank Popper and directed by Frank Popper.
Director:Unknown
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8.4/10(25 votes)
#24 - Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian
S12:E311/2/2010
The portrayal of Native Americans in cinema. / Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining, insightful, and often humorous look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through a century of cinema and examining the myth of "the Injun." Narrated by Diamond with infectious enthusiasm and good humor, this film is a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories their own way.
Director:Unknown
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8.4/10(8 votes)
#25 - How to Survive a Plague
S15:E712/30/2013
This acclaimed film tells the story of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), two groups whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these determined activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry to help identify promising new drugs and move them from experimental trials to patients. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage, the film reveals the controversial actions, heated meetings, heartbreaking failures and exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making. By David France.
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