Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Jesus Camp is a documentary that speaks to the tremendous reach of Netflix – a very small movie that’s been seen as widely as it has because it’s a mainstay in the service’s streaming library, and it always turns up on the service journalism listicles of the best docs on Netflix, and so on. So considering the ongoing popularity of that film, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the filmmakers have teamed with Netflix on their next film, which is (coincidentally enough) also a peek behind the closed doors of an insular religious group.
Variety reports that One of Us tracks three Hasidic Jews who make the difficult decision to leave their community while also, according to the filmmakers, “grappling with a universal human dilemma: that the cost of freedom can also mean losing the only community they’ve ever known.” Ewing and Grady spent three years with their subjects.
Their most recent film was last year’s wonderful Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You; they also directed the harrowing and thoughtful Detropia. Netflix is reportedly planning a fall debut (and awards-season push) for One of Us, following its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival; in the meantime, hey, look at that, they’re still streaming Jesus Camp.