Welcome to Leith

Institute History

  • 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Description

In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, saw its population of 24 grow by one. Trouble had come to town.

The newcomer was Craig Cobb, a notorious white supremacist. Quietly snapping up plots of land, he planned to take over the town government and establish Cobbsville, a haven for white separatists. In organizing a rally of supremacists and neo-Nazis and courting them to take up residence, Cobb does not endear himself to Leith. As his behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor.

This chronicle of a rural community’s struggle for sovereignty amidst extremism quite cleverly maneuvers us into an uncomfortable confrontation with our own values. Like the residents, we feel our anger escalate, but as disturbing and hateful as his racist attitudes are, Cobb is afforded certain protections under the law. The unsettling underpinning of Welcome to Leith is how we wrestle with our democratic principles when they're pushed to the limit. —J.N.


— John Nein

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]