“Welcome to beautiful downtown Mossville,” Stacey Ryan says wryly. “Population: one.” At one time, Mossville, Louisiana, was a thriving, self-sufficient, historically black community, teeming with gardens, grand fruit trees, and families. But since petrochemical industries started snatching up affordable real estate nearby, the community has begun to wither. Ryan’s neighbors begin to leave—at first one by one, then in droves—but he boldly refuses to budge. Soon he finds himself all alone. Surrounded by a smoldering, hellish industrial wasteland that has gobbled up Mossville’s once bucolic neighborhoods, he is cut off from power, supplies, and community. But Ryan stands his ground, even while living rough in his own home. This story of one man’s valiant resistance is at once intimately personal and vast in scope, exposing the links between race and environmental injustice, not just in the U.S. but across the globe.  TAW

Filmmaker Q&A following screening

Encore 2 – 2:20 pm in Cinema 3