Big Sky Documentary Film Festival

The swamp towns of south Florida, where kids chase rabbits through the muck of cut sugar cane fields, produce NFL talent at a rate that's almost unseen anywhere else in the country. When Ira McKinley returned to his hometown of Pahokee, he knew he wanted to make a film about the resilience and excellence that's persevered on the shores of Lake Okeechobee despite poverty and crushing natural disasters. That film is Outta the Muck, and in this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with McKinley and Bhawin Suchak before its world premeire on Wednesday, February 23.

Deep in the mountains of Montana and Idaho, a diverse group of Southeast Asian refugees, Latino immigrants and rural white Americans search for rare fungi. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with Olivier Matthon and Michael Reis of the film Up on the Mountain about the people searching for this wild crop and the issues of access and inequity that threaten to end the harvest -- and take away their livelihoods.

Hockey is religion in northern Minnesota, where ponds freeze over, snow drifts deep and kids strap up skates as soon as they can walk. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, ESPN Missoula's Colter Nuanez is joined by director Tommy Haines, producer Andrew Sherburne and cinematographer Ben Handler of the film Hockeyland, an up-close look at two high school hockey teams chasing a state championship while carrying the pressures of their puck-obsessed towns.

Quinn Brett was a hard-charging, record-setting mountain climber before a fall on Yosemite's famous El Capitan left her nearly dead and without the use of her legs. In the film An Accidental Life, director Henna Taylor intimately portrays Brett's arduous rehab and journey to find meaning in all that's been taken away from her. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Taylor and ESPN Missoula's Andrew Houghton discuss Brett's story and what drew Taylor to make such an emotional, wrenching film.

Being Michelle tells the incredible story of a deaf autistic woman who spent five years in Florida prisons, trapped in a system unable to accommodate or even recognize her needs. Now free, Michelle and her caretakers struggle to heal her traumas and keep her out of the criminal justice system that's already caused her so much pain. In this podcast, presented by the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the Missoula Broadcasting Company, Colter Nuanez discusses Being Michelle with the film's director, Atin Mehra, as well as producers Mae Thornton Mehra and Harold Foxx.