Director/producer Ben Klein gives a “thumbs-up” on footage for a documentary that will begin streaming on Peacock September 27. The film has already won an award, even before its wide release. Seated is executive producer Steven Berger. (Staff photo
For almost the past three years, documentary film director/producer Ben Klein, along with a crew from Los Angeles and New York City, has been visiting McCurtain County to film and interview people.
Klein has a large body of work, but he is best known for “The Exiles,” a documentary about pro-democracy protest leaders at Tiananmen Square. That film was the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2022 Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary.
His newest effort has resulted in a documentary that will be streamed, at first exclusively on Peacock, beginning September 27.
The 88-minute-long film is entitled “Kill. Bury. Print.” Even before its premiere, the film has already won the Montclair Film Festival’s David Carr Award for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking.
The film will be shown at that festival’s largest theater next month, followed by a panel discussion about it.
The festival’s award was announced Thursday.
The documentary is about this newspaper and the family that has operated it for decades, and it focuses on former reporter Chris Willingham’s accurate coverage of the sheriff’s department, which resulted in retaliation against him and his family by the Clardy administration.
The situation made international news in 2023 after sheriff’s officials and county commissioners discussed at a county commissioners’ meeting, when they thought no one was listening, killing Willingham and his father.
Hence the “Kill. Bury.” part of the title.
Most of the documentary was filmed in McCurtain County, but filmmakers also went to some other Oklahoma cities for interviews.
The film is co-produced by broadcaster Rachel Maddow, who early on, after publication of the story in “The New Yorker,” became an advocate for a closer look at what happened here.
Klein’s team pored through decades of newspapers and photos for the documentary.
During one visit, they also filmed a county commissioners’ meeting.
