90 minutes, color, English, 2017

Crossett, Arkansas is home to about 5,500 people, one Georgia-Pacific paper and chemical plant owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, and a startling rate of cancer and illness. The groundbreaking investigative documentary Company Town follows local pastor David Bouie as he fights to save his community. It offers a rare look inside a small town ruled by a single company, where the government's environmental protections have been subverted and ignored, leaving its citizens to take on entrenched powers in a fight for justice.

Crossett is just one of hundreds of towns across America polluted by big business and failed by local, state and federal environmental protections. Company Town ultimately asks, what do you do when the company you work for and live next to is making you sick?

The filmmaking team brings to light the bravery and collective action of Pastor Bouie, his congregation, and a variety of activists, organizers and environmental scientists - from Ouachita Riverkeeper Cheryl Slavant, who has been collecting health surveys and assisting scientists with air and water testing, to Barry Sulkin, Wilma Subra and Anthony Samsel, environmental scientists investigating pollution in the town's river. Through these powerful personal accounts and testimonies the film makes very real the consequences of battles that are fought in Washington - which in turn profoundly impact the well-being for people in towns like Crossett across the nation.

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"Company Town' shocked me. It contends that the economic consequences of racial discrimination increase cancer risk. Watching the movie led me to realize that wretched statistics on cancer mortalities are also linked to racial inequalities. Black cancer should matter, but has it mattered in the past and will it matter in the future? It is difficult to establish a causal connection between hazardous wastes and cancer; however, 'Company Town' presents a formidable case...it mounts a passionate protest on behalf of overlooked victims of corporate negligence and greed." - Susan Gubar, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"A vital, eye-opening portrait. Georgia-Pacific and its owners, Koch Industries, are taken to the proverbial woodshed in the trenchant, disturbing documentary. Powerful." - Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

"Makes a powerful case for enforcing federal and state environmental regulations more stringently than they have been at the GP mill, whose smokestacks keep on billowing potentially deadly gas into the lives and lungs of innocent people." - Film Journal International

"A film like this could literally save lives." - Sundance TV

"Reveals mind-boggling injustice." - This Week in New York

"Infuriating." - The Hollywood Reporter

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FEATURE: A Whistle-Blower Accuses the Kochs of “Poisoning” an Arkansas Town - The New Yorker, 9/9/16

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