Not too long after Donald Trump was elected the first time, we started looking for a story that would help us understand what had just happened in this country - how a divide so big that only a national election could get both sides’ attention, had sneaked up on us all.  The answer wasn’t an election film, or anything “political”.  We looked for a story deep below the news.

It was a cross-country drive in a yellow Penske truck that gave us our clue. Everywhere we stopped, seeing friends, family and strangers, people wanted to talk about one thing: aren’t those Muslims just terrible? We were mystified - what Muslims? - but it kept happening. Something else was there, way deeper.

Back in New York, we discovered news reports of an FBI arrest in SW Kansas just before the 2016 election. And on Valentine’s Day of 2018, we moved into an apartment on Kansas Street, in a place called Liberal, Kansas.

We were there most of that year and much of the next, attending the federal trial in Wichita and living life in a small town out on the High Plains. We stayed, determined to understand the place and make a film that would ring true to our new friends and neighbors.

The story we found was a big one, rooted in a history as old as the wagon trains crossing the frontier and stretching forward to the media storm in the Obama years that we had completely missed. It holds personal tragedy and a preview of what lay ahead for this country even then. It turned out to be what we went looking for - a deep story that can reintroduce us to each other, across the divide. 

Liberal, Kansas turned out to be a story from the fault lines.