THIS MUCH WE KNOW
A Refocus Film Festival Selection
Adapted from About a Mountain by John D'Agata, Director of the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, this innovative work of nonfiction investigates the hidden waste of the American dream. Using the book as a jumping off point, director L. Frances Henderson travels to Las Vegas at the peak of a suicide epidemic in an attempt to study the issue and find answers, interviewing the family and friends of Levi Presley, a happy and accomplished young man, who suddenly jumped off the city’s tallest casino. The week of his death, the U.S. Senate voted to permanently store the nation’s nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain - located just outside the city. Using these two stories to find answers to great unknowns, a filmmaker finds personal solace in retracing and expanding a reflection on the city with the highest suicide rate in the country and a nation scrambling to bury decades of nuclear excess in a nearby mountain.
Official Selection: 2022 Camden International Film Festival, 2022 Doc NYC Film Festival