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 organising a rally of supremacists and neo-Nazis and courting them to take up residence, Cobb does not endear himself to Leith. Tensions soar as his behaviour becomes increasingly more threatening, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbour.

Welcome to Leith is a fascinating and suspenseful story about race, civil liberties and freedom in the United States, playing out in the shadow of the biggest oil boom in North Dakota’s history. Underpinning this stranger-than-fiction documentary is the question of how we wrestle with our democratic principles when they’re pushed to the limit.

Welcome to Leith received the Filmmaker to Filmmaker Award at the 2015 HotDocs International Film Festival.