Netflix Lands Four Festival Docs Including Free Leonard Peltier, Teenage Wasteland (Exclusive)

Netflix has acquired four documentaries that were highlights of the festival circuit, from Sundance to Telluride to Tribeca.

Free Leonard Peltier, Teenage Wasteland, The Bend in the River and Room to Move have all been picked up by the streamer, with Adam Del Deo, Netflix’s vp, documentaries, saying, “It’s a privilege to give them a home on Netflix so audiences can keep discovering and loving great works like these.”

Free Leonard Peltier, which will stream on Netflix starting Oct. 12, tells the story of Peltier, a young leader of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, who was convicted of a brutal crime based on falsified evidence. The film from Jesse Short Bull and David France also tracks the decades-long efforts to secure the release of Peltier from prison.

Boys State team Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss are behind Teenage Wasteland, which revisits the story of a group of teenagers in upstate New York, who in the early 1990s make a film that uncovers a conspiracy that is poisoning their community. This film will debut on the service on Sept. 4.

The Bend in the River, out on Dec. 4, was executive produced by Joel Coen and Frances McDormand and follows a group of friends (including director Robb Moss) over five decades. After a 1978 summer spent rent-free, outdoors and with clothing-optional during a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, Moss checks in with his friends periodically to discuss choices made as individuals and as a generation.

The Amy Schumer executive-produced Room to Move, from director Alexander Hammer, follows the choreographer Jenn Freeman as she navigates a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and expresses her new reality through dance. Room to Move will hit Netflix on May 27.

Netflix has long been an avid buyer of documentaries, often finding awards success with the titles. Devo, the doc about the New Wave group, which earned a Grammy nomination for best music film, and the Emmy-nominated In Waves and War and The White House Effect, were all acquired out of festivals. The streamer also picked up its Oscar-nominated feature doc The Perfect Neighbor out of last year’s Sundance.