Riotsville, USA

Nominee
NEXT Innovator Award
Sundance Film Festival
A searing indictment of the militarization of the police force as a response to civil unrest.
-- Odie Henderson, RogerEbert.com

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Riotsville, USA

Welcome to Riotsville, USA--a point in American history when the nation’s rulers--politicians, bureaucrats, police--were faced with the mounting militancy of the late-1960s, and did everything possible to win the war in the streets. Using training footage of Army-built model towns called “Riotsvilles” where military and police were trained to respond to civil disorder, in addition to nationally broadcast news media, director Sierra Pettengill connects the stagecraft of “law and order” to the real violence of state practice. Recovering an obscured history whose effects have shaped the present in ways both insidious and explosive, RIOTSVILLE, USA is a poetic and furious reflection on the rebellions of the 1960s–and the machine that worked to destroy them.

Official Selection
2022 Sundance Film Festival – World Premiere
2022 DOC10
2022 New Directors/New Films
2022 SFFILM Festival
2022 DCDOX
2022 Traverse City Film Festival
Not Rated
Genre
Documentary, Politics, Activism, Fascism, Democracy
Runtime
91
Language
English
Director
Sierra Pettengill
Awards:
Nominee, NEXT Innovator Award, Sundance Film Festival
FEATURED REVIEW
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

Did you know — I certainly didn’t — that in 1968, following a summer of unrest across the nation, the US military set up two model “towns,” called Riotsvilles? There military personnel and police forces from across the US could learn how to quell “civil disorders.” Director Sierra Pettingill draws ...

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