Cross-posted from Knight Blog, the blog of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Since its earliest days, POV has been an exercise in bridging independent voices and the public by offering new tools and technology for storytelling and engagement.

Ido Haar is the director of 9 Star Hotel. After the film aired on POV, viewers wrote in with questions for Ido. Read on for his responses. Allen asks: Thanks for the film. I found similarities between the Palestinian men and Mexican migrant workers in America. Is this something you thought about as you were […]

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. Today, he muses on the most recent POV film. As I watched 9 Star Hotel, I was overcome by this strange feeling of déjà vu. I was captivated by the slice-of-sad-life story about the young Palestinian men […]

9 Star Hotel is the facetious name that Palestinian construction workers give to the pile of rocks that marks their clandestine nightly abode — a group of cardboard enclosures and tin-covered huts hidden in the brush-covered hills above the Israeli town of Modi’in. It is also the name of this week’s POV film about the […]

Israeli director Ido Haar grew up in a village on the edge of a pine forest halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When he went home to visit his parents, he often saw men running frantically across the highway. He says “the fear in their eyes haunted me, and I wanted to find out where […]

Kieran Fitzgerald is the director of The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández. After the film aired on July 8, viewers wrote in with questions for Kieran on the POV Blog. Read on as he answers questions about the equipment used in making the film, the decision to include President George W. Bush in the story and […]

Kieran Fitzgerald was only 17 years old in 1997 when a team of Marines shot and killed an innocent American citizen on the Texas-Mexico border. The film, narrated by Tommy Lee Jones, recounts the shooting and killing of a young American named Esequiel Hernández in 1997 by U.S. Marines patrolling the border as part of […]

The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández tells a frightening and cautionary tale about the dangers of using military as domestic law enforcement — a role that the military, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, had been prohibited from taking. In 1997, U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexican border as part of the U.S. war on drugs […]

We’re preparing for another great season here at POV — and now, we’re less than two months away from the first broadcast of the summer. Today, we’re taking a sneak peek at The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández by Kieran Fitzgerald. In 1997, U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexico border as part of the War on Drugs […]