6.0/1013 votes#1 - Sansón and Me
Season 25 Episode 1 - Aired 9/19/2023
Filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes wants to document Sansón's story, an immigrant serving life in prison. Unable to film Sansón, the documentary creatively shares his narrative through reenactments of his letters, featuring his own family as actors.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.6/1012 votes#2 - El Equipo
Season 25 Episode 2 - Aired 10/9/2023
Legendary U.S. anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow sets out to train a new group of Latin American students in the use of forensic anthropology. Their goal: to investigate disappearances in Argentina during the “dirty war”. The group expands its horizons, traveling to El Salvador, Bolivia and Mexico, doggedly working behind the scenes to establish the facts for the families of the victims.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
6.9/107 votes#3 - Three Chaplains
Season 25 Episode 3 - Aired 11/6/2023
Muslim chaplains uphold the First Amendment and vow to protect service members' right to practice their faith freely, despite facing long-held prejudice and disapproval from their own communities. The Muslim chaplains work hard to ensure that all service members have access to religious materials, services, and resources regardless of the religious beliefs they hold.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.3/106 votes#4 - A Town Called Victoria | Episode 1
Season 25 Episode 4 - Aired 2/20/2024
A south Texas town is thrown into the national spotlight when a local mosque is burned down in an apparent hate crime. After the media moves on, the community is left to reflect on its complex history with racism.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.5/106 votes#5 - A Town Called Victoria | Episode 2
Season 25 Episode 5 - Aired 2/20/2024
With the arson trial near, the suspect’s family argues his innocence. Meanwhile, facets of Victoria reveal the ingredients that might have turned him to hate and support for the town’s Muslim community begins to wane.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.7/106 votes#6 - A Town Called Victoria | Episode 3
Season 25 Episode 6 - Aired 2/20/2024
The prosecution presents shocking evidence. As the trial concludes, the engaged citizens of Victoria seek a way to build a more inclusive community.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.6/1015 votes#7 - Beyond Utopia
Season 25 Episode 7 - Aired 1/9/2024
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: N/A
Writer: N/A
6.0/1012 votes#8 - Racist Trees
Season 25 Episode 8 - Aired 1/22/2024
Were trees intentionally planted to exclude and segregate a Black neighborhood? Racial tensions ignite in this documentary, when a historically Black neighborhood in Palm Springs, California, fights to remove a towering wall of tamarisk trees. The trees form a barrier, believed by some to segregate the community, frustrating residents who regard them as an enduring symbol of racism.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
6.2/108 votes#9 - Razing Liberty Square
Season 25 Episode 9 - Aired 1/29/2024
Liberty City, Miami, is home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S. Now with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold. Wealthy property owners push inland to higher ground, creating a speculators’ market in the historically Black neighborhood previously ignored by developers and policy-makers alike.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.0/109 votes#10 - Sister Úna Lived a Good Death
Season 25 Episode 10 - Aired 2/5/2024
Following a cancer diagnosis, Sister Úna—a mischievous, rule-breaking Catholic nun dedicated to social justice—chooses to live as she’s dying. In this touching end-of-life documentary, the self-proclaimed “leader of the misfits” plans her funeral in her last nine months to live.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
6.0/106 votes#11 - Breaking the News
Season 25 Episode 11 - Aired 2/19/2024
Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.9/1011 votes#12 - Greener Pastures
Season 25 Episode 12 - Aired 3/25/2024
There is a mental health crisis happening for many American farmers. A combination of climate change and the pandemic have contributed to increasing economic uncertainty and isolation. Following four family farms in the Midwest over several years, the documentary Greener Pastures is a story of perseverance and survival within the farming industry in the heartland.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.5/108 votes#13 - A Thousand Pines
Season 25 Episode 13 - Aired 4/1/2024
Over the course of a grueling eight months, a crew of Oaxacan guest workers plant trees throughout the United States. This intimate portrait shows how hard it is to balance the physical demands of reforestation and extreme isolation while staying connected to the family back home.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votes#14 - Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s
Season 25 Episode 14 - Aired 4/8/2024
In Matter of Mind: My Parkinson's, three people navigate their lives with resourcefulness and determination in the face of a degenerative illness, Parkinson’s disease. An optician pursues deep brain stimulation surgery; a mother raising a pre-teen daughter becomes a boxing coach and an advocate for exercise; and a cartoonist contemplates how he will continue to draw as his motor control declines.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.3/1012 votes#15 - One With the Whale
Season 25 Episode 15 - Aired 4/22/2024
Hunting whales is a matter of life or death for the residents of St. Lawrence. When a shy Alaska Native teen becomes the youngest person ever to harpoon a whale for his village, his family is blindsided by thousands of keyboard activists brutally attacking him online—without full perspective on the importance of the hunt to his community's well-being.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.0/1010 votes#16 - Space: The Longest Goodbye
Season 25 Episode 16 - Aired 5/6/2024
NASA's goal to send astronauts to Mars would require a three-year absence from Earth, during which communication in real time would be impossible due to the immense distance. Meet the psychologists whose job is to keep astronauts mentally stable in outer space, as they are caught between their dream of reaching new frontiers and the basic human need to stay connected to home.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
6.1/1010 votes#17 - The Tuba Thieves
Season 25 Episode 17 - Aired 5/7/2024
What is the role of sound and what does it mean to listen? Hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel uses a series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles high schools as a jumping-off point to explore these questions. Through several d/Deaf people telling stories in a unique game of telephone, the central mystery of The Tuba Thieves isn’t about theft of instruments; it’s about the nature of sound itself.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Independent Lens Season 25
Every episode of Independent Lens Season 25 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Independent Lens Season 25!
This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions...
Genre:Documentary
Network:PBS
Season 25 Ratings Summary
"Sansón and Me" is the best rated episode of "Independent Lens" season 25. It scored 6/10 based on 13 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 9/19/2023. This episode is rated 1.6 points higher than the second-best, "El Equipo".