‘POV’ reveals lineup for 36th season, premiering June 26

Hailed as America’s longest-running non-fiction TV series, POV enters its 36th season with a slate of documentaries devoted to caregiving, transnationalism, activism, childhood aspirations, accessibility and intergenerational relationships.

The series’ commitment to provide a public platform that showcases bold forms of nonfiction storytelling by filmmakers with diverse voices and perspectives brings audiences unforgettable protagonists with unique points of views. Half of season 36’s films are directed by women, and more than two-thirds by filmmakers of color.

“From the Amazon forest to Ukraine and Vietnam, inner city Los Angeles to the shorelines of South Carolina, this season’s POV artists reveal the contours of our humanity, from various vantage points and lived experiences,” said Chris White, executive producer at American Documentary and POV. “I am confident each film will serve as an artful revelation to our viewers by introducing them to new perspectives they may have never imagined. We are grateful to be able to share the work of these gifted storytellers to a wide audience.”

The season opens 9 p.m. Monday, June 26 with the previously announced After Sherman, Jon-Sesrie Goff’s poetic feature debut about his quest to unearth his Black inheritance amidst a violent past in the South Carolina Low Country.

In A Story of Bones, premiering 9 p.m. Monday, July 3, directors Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere chronicle Annina van Neel’s and Peggy King Jorde’s efforts to reclaim a burial site containing thousands of formerly enslaved Africans on the famed British territory, St. Helena.

The feature debut of So Yun Um’s Liquor Store Dreams at 9 p.m. Monday, July 10 is an intimate, autobiographical documentary about two Korean American children of liquor store owners who must reconcile their own dreams with those of their immigrant parents.

POV alumni director Simon Lereng Wilmont and producer Monica Hellström’s timely Oscar-nominated documentary, A House Made of Splinters, premieres 9 p.m. Monday, July 17. As the war in Eastern Ukraine takes a heavy toll on families living near the frontline, a small group of strong-willed social workers work tirelessly in a special kind of orphanage to create an almost magical safe space for kids to live in.

Eat Your Catfish, filmed from the perspective of Kathryn, a woman with ALS, is an unvarnished account of a family’s bond and of a woman’s will to live. With both empathy and gallows humor, directors Adam Isenberg, Senem Tüzen and Noah Amir Arjomand – who is Kathryn’s son – probe the breakdown of a family pushed to its tipping point. That film premieres 9 p.m. Monday, July 24.

Rounding out the slate of new POV documentaries, premiering 9 p.m. Monday, July 31, is Vietnamese first-time director Hà Lệ Diễm’s riveting Oscar Shortlisted feature, Children of the Mist. The film details the challenges facing a Hmong girl living in rural Northern Vietnam caught between tradition and modernity.

Explore the full season 36 lineup.