There is much to see and hear over at this year’s Thin Line Fest in Denton this Wed, Mar 18 thru Sun, Mar 22, but the main attraction is film. Thin Line is the longest-running documentary festival in Texas, showcasing both local and international creators, including these feature-length movies.
10s Across the Borders: Set in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, New York, and elsewhere, 10s Across the Borders is a pan-Asian queer film that confronts homophobia, transphobia, and racism while celebrating the region’s underground ballroom culture. As the title suggests, Sze-Wei Chan envisions a world where members of Ballroom communities far from New York can also score a perfect 10. This is Southeast Asia’s answer to the seminal documentary, the 1990 classic PARIS IS BURNING. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Thu 3/19 @ 9pm, TRT 100)
American Pachuco – The Legend of Luis Valdez: An auteur emerges from America’s underclass: from migrant farmworker to revolutionary artist, Luis Valdez changed American culture. In the 1960s, his El Teatro Campesino performed on flatbed trucks and helped mobilize workers to win the first farmworker union contract. His “Zoot Suit” was the first Chicano play on Broadway. Despite critical rejection that killed the show, he persevered, creating “La Bamba”—a breakout blockbuster that authentically depicted Mexican-American life to the world. Now in its 60th year, El Teatro continues to be a beacon for Latino/a creators. American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez is the story of an artist who gave voice to the overlooked and opened pathways for generations. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Wed 3/18 @ 6:30pm, TRT 92)
Barbara Forever: An intimate, dream-like, and masterfully crafted look at the iconic life, work, & legacy of the pioneering feminist experimental filmmaker responsible for some of the most prominent early works in the history of lesbian cinema. Tracing her prolific canon alongside never-before-seen documentation of her life and body, Barbara Forever reveals Hammer’s unconventional attempts to live on forever—especially through the extensive archiving of her films. Directed by Brydie O’Connor, this is the feature realization of the award-winning 2022 short LOVE, BARBARA. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Fri 3/20 @ 9:34pm, TRT 102)
Black Zombie: From the flickering screens of Hollywood horror to the haunted cane fields of colonial Haiti, Black Zombie unearths the buried origins of the zombie, reclaiming it as a symbol of survival and spiritual resistance. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Thu 3/19 @ 8:30pm, TRT 87)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston: Filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig chronicles the life of a manic-depressive musician and artist in The Devil and Daniel Johnston using a blend of home movies, Johnston’s own audiotapes, vintage performances, and current footage. Johnston has recorded more than 10 full-length albums, amassed a prolific portfolio of sketches, and among his supporters are Matt Groening, David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Beck, and Tom Waits. (Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, 411 E Sycamore St, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 2pm, TRT 110)
Down From The Mountain: When the time came for the Coen Brothers to find the music for their Southern period piece comedy, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” they asked record producer T Bone Burnett to lend a hand. The resulting Down From The Mountain film documents the evening’s concert, complete with backstage preparations and rehearsals. Co-produced by Frazer Pennebaker, the film by D A Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Nick Doob captures a joyous, free-spirited celebration of a truly American musical form. (Dan’s Silverleaf, 103 Industrial St, Denton, Sun 3/22 @ 2pm, TRT 98)
Ice Breath: Between 2015 and 2024, Leonard Alecu filmed the melting icebergs off Greenland’s East coast. Sailing dangerously close to icebergs, Alecu handled his camera to record the ice masses yielding to the ruthless ocean. Filmed in black and white, Ice Breath is a cinematic poem whose only elusive actor is the filmmaker’s gaze. In 43 minutes, a sequence of flat pictures turns into dynamic tableaux, an existential journey from genesis to extinction. The hypnotic feature of the film is enhanced by the soundtrack Become Ocean, a haunting composition by John Luther Adams, suggestive of a relentless tidal surge, of melting polar ice and rising sea levels. Become Ocean received critical acclaim, earning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2015 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. More than an environmental documentary, Ice Breath and Become Ocean is an experimental fusion exploring the vast, inscrutable meanings of climate change. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 12pm, TRT 42)
The Last Picture Shows: Ten states. 10,825 miles. 123 theaters. In his latest feature, The Last Picture Shows, filmmaker Rustin Thompson journeys into the American West in search of traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater. On the trip, he finds long abandoned and forgotten cinemas; movie houses that have fallen into disrepair; theaters recently closed, theaters struggling to hold on, and theaters that—thanks to their thoughtful caretakers—are not only surviving but thriving. Between the stops along the way, Rustin poetically intersperses excerpts from Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 classic film The Last Picture Show and reflections on past and present hardships facing the film exhibition industry. The Last Picture Shows reminds viewers that even in vast cinema deserts, there are oases of community and gathering that remain, where the movie house continues to be a place of wonder, contemplation, and connection. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Thu 3/19 @ 6pm, TRT 78)
Lost Queen: This feature documentary follows Sultana Begum, the great-granddaughter-in-law of India’s last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Living in poverty in a Howrah slum, far removed from the grandeur of her royal ancestry, Sultana survives on a small pension and occasional help from strangers. Despite her dire circumstances, she wages a decade-long legal battle with the Indian government, seeking recognition of her family’s historical link to the Red Fort—once the heart of Mughal power. Her struggle is not for wealth or power, but for dignity, justice, and remembrance. Through intimate vérité-style filmmaking, Lost Queen captures Sultana’s daily life, court visits, and quiet reflections, revealing a forgotten royal legacy that continues to breathe beneath the surface of modern India. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sun 3/22 @ 3:15pm, TRT 68)
PROOF: This documentary by Mark Birnbaum, explores the forces that compel Texas photographer Byrd Williams IV to create images of ordinary life that “speak to the unborn.” In four hundred to eight hundred years from now, when the millions of digital photos snapped every day around the globe are lost to the ages, Williams’ images of silver and gold on paper will show future generations how we lived, dressed, worked, and died. Now in his sixties, Williams uses the same equipment and chemistry—including an archaic view camera—employed by his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, photographers all, to create unadorned portraits that expand a family archive of over 400,000 prints, negatives, glass plates, cameras, journals, and diaries that span two centuries. The collection is housed at the University of North Texas. At its core, the film PROOF is a story of a man preoccupied with the legacy of his forebearers—and his own. In his work, Williams offers a glimpse of the ways his personal experiences, painful family tragedy, and obsession with mortality inform the images he makes and the stories they tell. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Fri 3/20 @ 5:30pm, TRT 72)
Quakertown USA: In 1921, Quakertown stood as a thriving Black community in the heart of Denton. Home to doctors, business owners, educators, and landowners, it functioned as a self-sustaining economic and cultural center built through effort and mutual support. As Denton grew, Quakertown’s success increasingly intersected with the city’s broader economic ambitions. The community occupied valuable land, and its businesses had become integral to the local economy, serving both Black residents and white patrons alike. Economic relationships began to cross racial lines in ways that challenged the social norms of the time, including Black property owners renting to white immigrant families. These shifts brought heightened attention to Quakertown and intensified debates about land use, growth, and “progress.” Quakertown USA documents what followed: Not a single violent event, but a coordinated series of civic actions and policies that led to the forced displacement of Quakertown’s residents. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 7pm, TRT 73)
The River Remembers: This documentary follows the intertwined struggles of the Indigenous people of the Elwha and Klamath Rivers as they lead the two largest dam removals in U.S. history. These rivers have always been lifelines, and their decline has mirrored the erasure of Native ways of life. The film braids together intimate family stories and sweeping historical battles: parents teaching their children to fish, catastrophic salmon kills that galvanized action, and generations who refused to give up a century-long fight. From the joy of witnessing water flow freely on the Elwha to the hard-fought victory of the Undam the Klamath campaign, The River Remembers reveals a movement in which ecological restoration and cultural survival are inseparable. More than a story of loss, it is a vision of resilience, healing, and the possibility of renewal for future generations. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 2pm, TRT 59)
Sally! On the surface, documentary Sally! is about Sally Miller Gearhart, an iconoclastic radical lesbian who lived life on her own terms and whose powerful presence practically hurtles off the screen. However, the film goes beyond being the straightforward biography of a “hidden figure” deserving more recognition. It also studies social movements, whose leaders wouldn’t exist without their equally resolute behind-the-scenes compatriots. And it explores the complex nature of biography itself: Can we even recount the chronicle of a single “heroic” person, or are all our stories just imperfect windows into certain times and places? And can these histories be placed in tidy boxes, or are all life accounts beautiful, sometimes mysterious kaleidoscopes from multiple perspectives that don’t always come together into a neatly unified whole? (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 8:45pm, TRT 90)
Sincerely, Ric: When the filmmaker’s dad uncovered a storage unit filled with Ric Routledge’s forgotten tapes and raw footage, a lost chapter of his life emerged. Ric revolutionized dog shows and then disappeared into obscurity. Now his story, told in his own words, finally comes to light in the documentary Sincerely, Ric. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Fri 3/20 @ 6:30pm, TRT 58)
This Is Not A Drill: Can the smallest of voices topple the largest of giants? Academy Award nominee Oren Jacoby’s new film This Is Not A Drill gives us reason not only to hope but to believe. When their communities are threatened by a perilous pipeline plan, three fearless grassroots leaders and a group of rebellious Rockefeller heirs step forward to confront Big Oil’s greatest deception and battle environmental racism wreaking havoc in Black and rural communities in a fight for a renewable future. (Campus Theatre, 214 W Hickory St, Denton, Sun 3/22 @ 5:30pm, TRT 80)
Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong: As America’s aging wastewater systems begin to fail, one plant does all it can to stay afloat. In the documentary Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, Plant manager Dustin Price, together with his motley crew of unlikely heroes, battles aging infrastructure, forever chemicals, and the misconceptions of an odor-averse public to keep Portland, Maine, clean and healthy. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Thu 3/19 @ 6:30pm, TRT 48)
Unsound: This documentary follows the creation of Psychosis to Song, a record produced for C.I.A. Records and recorded at Wire Road Studios in Houston, Texas. Unsound documents seven musicians whose lives are shaped by serious mental illness as they transform hallucination, despair, and isolation into music. In the studio, symptom becomes symbol, and inner chaos finds structure through sound. More than a recording project, this is an act of survival. Unsound confronts stigma by revealing the life-saving power of expression—where being heard is not an artistic luxury but a human necessity. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Fri 3/20 @ 8:30pm, TRT 87)
WE ARE PAT: This documentary explores the evolution of gender identity and comedy from the ‘90s to the present day through the lens of the iconic Saturday Night Live sketch, “It’s Pat.” WE ARE PAT examines Pat’s origins as a joke rooted in the cultural anxiety of the ‘90s around gender, while drawing striking parallels to today’s culture wars around transness and queerness. Trans and non-binary comedians and culture-makers reimagine and rewrite the original Pat sketches, using camp and humor to reclaim and re-envision an iconic character in American comedy. The film explores humor as both a tool of oppression and a radical force for change. Beyond comedy, WE ARE PAT raises complex questions: How does art age? What responsibility does a creator have as cultural values evolve? Can we reclaim narratives that once mocked us, transforming pain into laughter, visibility, and ultimately, our own creations? (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 4pm, TRT 92)
WTO/99: An immersive archival documentary, WTO/99 depicts the four-day clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 40,000+ people who took to the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the WTO Conference and its impact on human rights, labor, and the future of continued globalization. (LensProToGo Theater, 109 W Walnut S, Denton, Sat 3/21 @ 6:15pm, TRT 102)
All attendees are required to register at ThinLine.us/passes. While the Thin Line Festival is free to attend, donations are always welcome. VIP add-ons are also available for purchase.
