White Earth

White Earth, North Dakota, is a sleepy town on the wind-scoured northern plains that has been transformed by the oil boom. The population has mushroomed from 60 to 500, clusters of trailers have erupted to house workers, and rigs dot the stark landscape. J. Christian Jensen’s Oscar-nominated short White Earth paints a poignant portrait of the hardscrabble realities of the energy boom in a harsh winter landscape through the voices of unexpected narrators — three adolescents and an immigrant mother. Though it’s short, White Earth tells a story about hope and desperation, innocence and survival, rabid energy extraction and the fault lines that run through the American Dream.