The charge was a plot to kill Somali Muslim refugees. And there was a plot — but maybe others were helping write the script.
With material never presented to the jury,
A Conspiracy on the High Plains reveals what really
happened.
But the story is also bigger than that — it’s about how the country got so divided, and how regular folks in the middle of the country came to see Donald Trump as the right answer to what was wrong with this country. And why ‘Freedom of Speech’ is an idea that still divides us.
Part I
Histories of loss, regional and personal, shape this story. People out here take care of each other. As the "Obama years” grew dark, one Old West tradition - armed militias sworn to protect the community - surged again.
Part II
The FBI takes notice, and hires informant Dan Day to target the largest militia in the region. When that flops, he looks for others voicing extreme fears online. Sure enough, there they are: Curtis and Gavin and Patrick.
Part III
In the emptiness of the High Plains, on a steady diet of Facebook, Fox News, and Alex Jones, conspiracy theories seem all too real. Nowhere near action they sleepwalk toward plans to bomb a Somali apartment complex. It’s all secret, until Curtis has a fight with his girlfriend Lula.
Part IV
In a federal courtroom months later, the case puts the media, the 1st Amendment, and values of the Old West on trial - along with Patrick, Curtis and Gavin. Prosecution and Defense re-interpret the story we’ve just watched unfold. The final verdict is swift. The audience is left to debate - was this justice?
Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini have been making documentary films together for more than 25 years.
Shari is a Texan who grew up in New Mexico and studied ethnographic film at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe. From there, her work began in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Michael made his first film at age 19, in Varanasi, India. "Banaras" is still in use in universities today.
Together, they’ve made films on politics and social issues inside and outside the US, including "Well-Founded Fear” and the 10-feature documentary series, "How Democracy Works Now". Widely respected for their ability to get deep inside complex situations and tell a nuanced story, their work has screened at numerous festivals including NYFF, Sundance, Berlin, San Francisco, Full Frame and been available on HBO, CNN, CNN International, PBS, the BBC, Channel 4 London, Netflix and Kanopy.
Please see https://epidavros.org/about-us for additional bio details.
Not long after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, we started looking for a story that would help us understand what was going on in our country - how a divide so big that only a national election could get both sides’ attention - had sneaked up on us. We discovered reports of an FBI arrest in SW Kansas just before the 2016 election. Out of the blue, three ordinary white guys arrested on charges of conspiracy to blow up an apartment building full of Somali Muslim refugees. Weapon of mass destruction, secret tape recordings.
We went to Kansas to tell a story about Islamophobia. We left with something very different. A story about why our country is so divided, about the multiple injustices done to rural Americans, and the ways in which the instruments of the law, when applied to people we disagree with and dislike, can bring our own values of justice and fairness into high relief. It turned out to be what we'd gone looking for - a story from the fault lines of this country, one that stays current because it's buried deep in what divides us.
We'll send Screening dates, release news and occasional notes from the edit room. Nothing else, and never your address to anyone.
