Documenting a clash between the conservative population of a small town and migrants trying to escape poverty, the documentary explores our ideas of good and evil and how we sometimes fail to distinguish between them. The film focuses on the figure of a local pastor, who is not as simple as he might seem.
When a sleepy provincial town in North Dakota gets caught in an oil boom, hundreds of transient workers from across the States start arriving in hope for a brighter future: ex-convicts, drug addicts, and those who simply had no luck in their homeland. Pitying the strangers, a local pastor defies the conservative majority and offers them home, but the consequences will be harsh for the migrants as much as for himself.
With a number of prestigious awards, Jesse Moss’s masterfully produced and disturbing feature is among America’s most powerful documentaries of recent years, which The Guardian likens to ‘the modern-day Grapes of Wrath’.
The Overnighters is screened as part of The New Archaic thematic block of the NOW. Constructing Contemporaneity festival, organised by Garage, Colta.ru and The Heinrich Böll Foundation. The screening will be followed by a discussion with religious historian Karen Armstrong, moderated by Mikhail Ratgauz.
The screening is supported by the United States Embassy in Moscow.
The Overnighters
Dir. Jesse Moss. 90 min. USA, 2014
18+