Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Premiering tonight on HBO, HBO Go and HBO Now, Don Argott's Believer follows Mormon Dan Reynolds, frontman for the Grammy Award-winning band Imagine Dragons, as he takes on a new mission to explore how the Mormon Church treats its LGBTQ members. With the rising suicide rate among teens in the state of Utah, Reynolds' concern with the church's policies sends him on an unexpected path of acceptance and change.
Also premiering tonight, on PBS' POV, Hyewon Lee's Singing with Angry Bird follows a children's choir master in Pune, India—nicknamed "Angry Bird" for his quick temper—as he tries to convince parents of the value of music education by training them with their children for a joint concert.
On the heels of her Academy Award -nominated short Heroin(e), Elaine McMillion Sheldon tackles the opioid epidemic in her feature Recovery Boys, premiering June 29 on Netflix. Sheldon follows four men who are trying to reinvent their lives after years of drug abuse. The film reveals the strength, brotherhood and courage necessary to overcome addiction, as well as the internal conflict of recovery and the external hurdles of an unforgiving society.
Premiering July 1 on CNN, Roger Ross Williams' American Jail explores what fuels America's prison system. Williams' investigation presents a range of stakeholder positions, and offers working examples of potential solutions, to address the "prison pipeline" that criminalizes the mistakes of the poor and the vulnerable.
Available July 1 on iTunes and Amazon, How Jack Became Black examines the issue of race and identity in an increasingly multiracial populace. Filmmaker Eli Steele, who is deaf and multiracial, embarks on his quest after attempting to enroll his son, Jack, into the local public elementary school, only to be told that he had to choose a "Primary Race" box to identify his son.