Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, producer of the Sundance U.S. documentary prize-winning film “Seeds,” looked over the room of students and documentary filmmakers sipping coffee and munching on bagels.
“Filmmaking, at the heart of it, is discovery,” Gordon said.
It was the first day of True/False documentary film festival, which every year begins the last weekend in February in Columbia, Missouri. Several of the documentaries that premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January make their next stop here, in a town much different to Park City, trading the snowy mountains for a heartland waking up to spring.
“It’s that Midwest hospitality that makes it just so special,” said Emily Edwards, True/False marketing and communications director.
Twenty-four documentary short films and 30 documentary features were shown, including Sundance films “The Dating Game,” “Middletown,”“Predators,” “How to Build a Library,” “Sally” and “Seeds.”
Community has been central to the festival’s mission since beginning in 2004. Edwards explained that even if documentary films aren’t what people are looking for, the festival offers a selection of musical performances, guided art walks and even a parade.
On Friday evening, Feb. 28, the festival began with the March March, an annual parade through the heart of downtown. The True/False Q Queens, a group of flashy volunteers who help with the queue lines at screening venues, led in a blur of colors and sequins, dancing to the drums and brass.
There’s little structure to the parade besides where and when it starts and that it will end in front of the historic Missouri Theatre. Paraders pulled in spectators from the sidewalks to be a part of the march and join friends, family and colleagues.
At the theater, bubbles floated around the crowd who stayed to watch performances from Marching Mizzou, the University of Missouri’s marching band, and to maybe even join in the dance circle of the Jabberwocky Studio breakdancers.
Soon, the crowd dispersed, offering some form of “I have to run to my next film” as they scrambled to various screening venues around downtown. True/False 2025 was in full swing.
Libraries in film, Park City to Columbia
In an effort to facilitate accessibility and community each year, the Show Me True/False film selection has reduced ticket prices and an extra emphasis on the conversation around the film. “How to Build a Library” was this year’s selection, marking the first time an international film has been featured as the Show Me screening.
“Show Me True/False was born out of our Community Partnerships Program and a way to get those community partners notably involved in the fest,” Edwards said.
“How to Build a Library” is centered around two women, Shiro and Wachuka, and their mission to decolonize the libraries in Nairobi, Kenya.
The film touches on the way that libraries function as community spaces and the importance they carry. Shiro and Wachuka see libraries not just as rooms filled with books, but as something reimagined.
Adriane Herrick Juarez, executive director of the Park City Library, shared a similar sentiment.
“I remodeled this library when I first came to Park City, and there was so much need for technological upgrade and keeping up with new sources of information,” Herrick Juarez explained.
She sees libraries similarly to how the film does:
“Libraries are more than ever community centers — places where people can gather. You need a lot of beautiful spaces where people feel comfortable to do whatever kind of work they want to do in the library. That can mean so many different things for different people.”
Herrick Juarez is glad libraries are receiving attention. Kim A. Snyder, director of the 2025 Sundance film “The Librarians,” even paid the Park City Library a special visit during Sundance.
“I’m so thrilled that these films are being made about libraries,” Herrick Juarez said.
Edwards drew parallels in the demographics of Park City and Columbia and how it’s important for a festival to program a healthy variety of horizon-expanding films.
“We’re of the community, for the community, but we (are) also an international film fest,” she said. “This programming allows us to put those two things in conversation with each other. How does this place look like that place?”
The who’s who of doc film
Filmmakers from across the country find themselves in the middle of Missouri for True/False, even if they don’t have a film showing.
Tess Jagger-Wells, a filmmaker and recent graduate from the University of Missouri’s Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism master’s program, described how impactful the festival was to her three years ago.
“I had never quite understood the vastness of the documentary landscape, and by the end of the fest I was bursting with inspiration and motivation to create my own film,” she said.
Her film, “Victim,” received a Special Jury Award at the student film festival, Stronger than Fiction, in 2024.
“One of the jurors for that fest was Isabel Castro, who just won her own Special Jury Award for her film ‘Selena y los Dinos’ at the crown jewel of festivals, Sundance,” Jagger-Wells said.
Her film will have its New York City premiere next week at the First Look film festival.
“Film festivals are a celebration of the art of film, but they are also a testament to the strength and closeness of the filmmaking community,” Jagger-Wells said.
Robert Greene, who oversees the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism as the filmmaker-in-chief, also has ties to Sundance, as do many who attend. Greene was a Sundance Art of Nonfiction fellow in 2015 and then went on to serve on the U.S. Documentary Jury for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Greene’s film “Kate Plays Christine” won a Sundance award in 2016, and his film “Bisbee ’17” premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Greene coordinates and helps moderates Based on a True Story, or BOATS, the conference that held prior to the official kickoff of True/False.
At BOATS this year, a panel of filmmakers from “Seeds,” a film about Black generational farmers in the American South, shared insights as to how the film came to life, nine years in the making.
Director Brittany Shyne talked about transforming a one-woman graduate school project into something ready to premiere on the big screen at Sundance.
“Seeds” is an intimate black-and-white film that uses the personal moments that unfold organically to highlight that the amount of land Black farmers now own is a fraction of what it once was. In 1910, landownership among Black farmers was 16 million acres.
Shyne said that a major influence for the film was listening to her grandmother’s stories growing up, which helped her forge a strong connection with the Black farmers the film documents. There were times she didn’t know what the film’s story would be, but there was a mutual understanding between her and the film’s subjects that Shyne wanted to honor the families’ histories and document their lives honestly.
Producer Danielle Varga explained that there was a level of trust with Shyne having the “intuition that there is something there.”
They had originally imagined the film as with no score to accompany the visuals, but the team decided to bring a composer on to the film to help elevate scenes, including the cotton harvesting sequence, blending the sounds of heavy equipments with bold, instrumental tones.
Her composer for the film, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, described the process of being brought onto the project as “very natural” and said he was stunned by the work Shyne had.
“Things reveal themselves to you over time,” he said. “When you are compelled to make the thing, make the thing.”
For Shyne, the experience of winning at Sundance and showing at True/False has been positive. She said she felt audiences had been generous.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” she said. “It feels weird.”
While Sundance’s future is still uncertain, True/False is fully engrained in Columbia. Edwards invited the Park City and Sundance communities to join in on the Missouri-based nonfiction festival in the future.
“I really hope they get to visit,” she said. “Really, it’s better seen than heard. It’s tough to talk about, but it’s a beauty to witness.”
For Edwards, True/False had been her introduction to the “weird little place in the middle of the middle of the middle,” as she called Columbia.
“I came here, and I experienced True/False, and it totally changed the way I saw the world,” she said.
To learn more about the festival, visit truefalse.org.