
POV
The Return
When California amends one of the harshest criminal sentencing laws in the US, thousands of "lifers" are unexpectedly freed from prison.
Two childhood friends from Midland, Texas fall under the sway of a charismatic revolutionary who leads them down a path that changes their lives.
Kelly Duane de la Vega is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened at film festivals worldwide, opened theatrically across the country and broadcast nationally on PBS and the Documentary Channel. Since founding Loteria Films in 2001, Duane de la Vega has directed and produced three documentary features, multiple documentary series, and… Show more
Katie Galloway is a documentary director, producer and writer whose films explore the intersections of institutional power, civil and human rights, and political activism. Galloway, who joined Loteria as co-head in 2009, won the 2012 Writer’s Guild of America’s Best Documentary Screenplay Award for Better This World, which, after premiering at SXSW,… Show more
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"Get ready – because we're going to shut this f---er down!" These were the words spoken by charismatic revolutionary Brandon Darby, 32, as he prepared David McKay, 22, and Bradley Crowder, 23, of Midland, Texas for protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention. With a wounded cowboy charm, Darby told his star struck protégés activist war stories — from tangling with Middle Eastern gun runners to rescuing victims from the toxic waters of Katrina. Over more than eight months leading up to the convention, Darby was coach and mentor to the young men — training them in fighting techniques to engage police, relaying romantic stories of Molotov-throwing anarchists, and pumping them up for what he promised would be serious political action in Minneapolis. "Direct action is intense – and anyone who comes with me is going to be successful. I'm not f***ing around!"
But what Crowder and McKay didn't know was that Darby was an FBI informant. And on the eve of the convention the young men, both political neophytes with no criminal records, were busted for making and possessing eight Molotov cocktails. Each faced multiple federal terrorism charges and decades in prison. Darby, until then their mentor, would be the government's star witness against them.
Using the trial as a backdrop and dramatic narrative, Better This World untangles a web of questions: Why did the government spend nearly eight months following political naïfs with no criminal history? Why did their informant Brandon Darby, who was to be "eyes and ears only," seem to become their leader? Why did these all-American boys from Midland build eight bombs? Better This World probes these questions and more as it paints a gripping portrait of the strange and intriguing odyssey of these young men.
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