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Director: Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos
Awards: Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary - Sundance Film Festival 2014
Rich Hill, Missouri. Seventy miles south of Kansas City, fifteen miles east of the Kansas border. Once a thriving mining town, shortly after World War II, the coal was gone – mined out. Stores closed, people moved away, farms were sold. It’s a story that could be told in hundreds of towns across America.
But people still live here: 1,393 of them at last count. Deep potholes line the gravel roads, and property tax is almost nonexistent. The town center is littered with piles of bricks, and crumbling buildings are all that remain of the original bank, the corner pharmacy, a cafe. Yet there is still the dream of transformation on the horizon: if only the citizens could attract more business or Rich Hill could be home to an industry once again.
Every year on the 4th of July, like many communities across America, the town puts on a grand celebration, with a carnival and a parade. Rich Hill has a record-setting pie auction to raise the funds for the fireworks. It is a once-a-year time to be part of something larger and grander – the way things used to be – for even a few days. And then the carnival pulls out.
Rich Hill intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in an impoverished Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.
“Rich Hill doesn’t just make you feel like you know these boys; it makes you care about them.” – Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post
“Inside these average American lives are futures far too often passed over or, worse, written off. This terrific film gives the teenagers their due.” – Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
“A truly moving and edifying film, Rich Hill is the type of media object that could and should be put in a time capsule for future generations.” – Katie Walsh, The Playlist
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91 MIN
