Running for the Mountains (2024)

King Coal

The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community sits on the brink of massive change.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Produced by Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine for MTV and Dickhouse Productions, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia is a documentary about the renowned West Virginia outlaw Jesco White and his eccentric backwoods family. In addition to getting in trouble with the law, the Whites, who live deep within Appalachia, uphold a time-honored dancing style, even as they contend with poverty, drugs and other issues. Alternately humorous and sad, the movie is an unflinching look at life on the criminal margins of rural mountain culture.

Rand University

Randy Moss has long been an enigma known for his brilliance on the football field and his problems off it. Sometimes there's even been an intersection of those two qualities. "Rand University" gets to that crossing by going back to where he came from - Rand, West Virginia - and exploring what almost derailed him before he ever became nationally known for his extraordinary abilities as a wide receiver.

Picture Proof

Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

This 2005 documentary film chronicles the life of Daniel Johnston, a manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist, from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his mental illness and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obsession.

The Mothman of Point Pleasant

Learn the terrifying, true story about thirteen months that changed history! In November of 1966 a car full of kids encountered a creature unlike anything they'd ever seen before. In the weeks and months to follow, the monster – now known as The Mothman – was sighted again and again on country roads and around the state of West Virginia.

American Hollow

This documentary follows the lives of the Bowling family as they fight to survive in dirt-poor Appalachia. Matriarch Iree has given birth to 13 children, but only two have left to seek better lives in Ohio while the rest have married and started their own impoverished families near home. Uneducated and unskilled, all are unemployed, and domestic violence and alcoholism pose serious problems. The filmmakers explore the family's relationships through interviews and footage of their daily lives.

The Curse and the Jubilee

An intimate, arresting portrait of the cursed Appalachian mining town of Ivanhoe, Virginia. The film captures the town as it prepares for the annual Jubilee, a wild 4th of July celebration where families and neighbors let loose and triumph over daily hardships, industrial abandonment, and race.

Portraits and Dreams

Revisit photographs created by Kentucky school children in the 1970s and the place where their photos were made. Photographer and artist Wendy Ewald, who guided the students in making their visionary photographs, returns to Kentucky and learns how the lives and visions of her former students have changed.

Eyes of the Mothman

In 1966 West Virginia, four friends encounter a tall, winged creature in the woods surrounding an abandoned dynamite factory.

The End of an Old Song

John Cohen, founding member of the ‘50s folk troupe the New Lost City Ramblers, started making films in order to bring together the two disciplines he was heavily active in: music and photography. The End of an Old Song brings us to North Carolina, and demonstrates the power of old English ballads sung with gusto while soused in a saloon.

Phototaxis

“Phototaxis” draws parallels between Mothman, a prophetic and demonized creature in West Virginia lore, and Narcotics Anonymous, the main treatment program in West Virginia’s addiction epidemic.

You Gave Me A Song: The Life and Music of Alice Gerrard

You Gave Me A Song offers an intimate portrait of old-time music pioneer Alice Gerrard and her remarkable, unpredictable journey creating and preserving traditional music. The film follows eighty-four year old Gerrard over several years, weaving together verité footage of living room rehearsals, recording sessions, songwriting, archival work, and performances with photos and rare field recordings. Much of the film is told in Alice’s voice and via interviews with musical collaborators and family members who share the story of Alice and others chasing that high lonesome sound.

My Great Great Great Uncle Built Churches

Bob Childress was the founder and builder of the famous "Rock Churches" of southwest Virginia, all established between 1919 and 1954. In 2022, Buford Jessup and his family set out to visit all seven of his great uncle's churches.

Sprout Wings and Fly

Set in the North Carolina Appalachians, Sprout Wings and Fly honors the fiddle playing of 82-year-old Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. Tommy was quirky, gregarious and generous, and this film shows him at his best, in fine fiddling form.

Mountain Talk

Mountain dialect, culture and identity are revealed by the true experts on Southern Appalachian culture--the people whose families have lived there for generations.

Mountain Monsters: A Tribute to Trapper

The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (A.I.M.S.) team comes together to reminisce and celebrate the life of their founder, John "Trapper" Tice, in this Mountain Monsters special.

The Mothman Prophecies

Reporter John Klein is plunged into a world of impossible terror and unthinkable chaos when fate draws him to a sleepy West Virginia town whose residents are being visited by a great winged shape that sows hideous nightmares and fevered visions.

Timber Falls

A weekend of camping in the mountains becomes an excursion into hell for a young couple, who become pawns in a grotesque plot hatched by deranged locals.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Two hillbillies are suspected of being killers by a group of paranoid college kids camping near the duo's West Virginian cabin. As the body count climbs, so does the fear and confusion as the college kids try to seek revenge against the pair.

Loggerheads

A troubled woman seeks out the child she gave up for adoption; a gay motel owner takes in a handsome drifter; and the wife of a preacher frets that a gay couple has moved in across the street. All of their lives will intersect as Loggerheads subtly draws out their secret losses and desires.

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!

A small-town girl wins a date with a Hollywood star through a contest. When the date goes better than expected, a love triangle forms between the girl, the celebrity, and the girl's best friend.

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

A group of people find themselves trapped in the backwoods of West Virginia, fighting for their lives against a group of vicious and horribly disfigured inbred cannibals.

Act of Vengeance

In 1969, an administrator runs against the corrupt president of the United Coal Miners Union, and becomes the target of a murder plot.

Blood Creek

A man and his brother on a mission of revenge become trapped in a harrowing occult experiment dating back to the Third Reich.

Them That Follow

A Pentecostal pastor, Lemuel Childs, and his believers handle venomous snakes to prove themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter, Mara holds a secret that threatens to tear the church apart: her romantic past with a nonbeliever, Augie. As Mara’s wedding to a devoted follower looms, she must decide whether or not to trust the steely matriarch of their community, Hope, with her heart and life at stake.

The Hunted

Chasing their dream of landing their own hunting show, Jake and Stevie head to the dense, secluded mountains of West Virginia. Equipped with only their bow and camera, they have just three days to kill a monster buck big enough to grab the attention of the network...and they've found him. But the sun has set, and they realize they're not alone.

The Turning

Gillian Anderson in her first ever screen role. Anderson's psycho boyfriend, Cliff, returns to his home town seething with pent-up frustration and rage. Four years earlier his family was on the verge of breaking up. Now he's returned to put things right, fired by a psychopathic determination he is intent on destroying his father's new relationship...whatever it takes.

The World Made Straight

In a rural Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past.

Dear Wendy

In a blue-collar American town, a group of teens bands together to form the Dandies, a gang of gunslingers led by Dick Dandelion. Following a code of strict pacifism at odds with the fact that they all carry guns, the group eventually lets in Sebastian, the grandson of Dick's childhood nanny, Clarabelle, who fears the other gangs in the area. Dick and company try to protect Clarabelle, but events transpire that push the gang past posturing.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

Retired military commander Colonel Dale Murphy hosts the simulated post-apocalyptic reality show where participants are challenged to survive a remote West Virginia wasteland. But the show turns into a nightmarish showdown when each realizes they are being hunted by an inbred family of cannibals determined to make them all dinner!

October Sky

Homer Hickam is a kid with only one future in sight, to work in the local coal mine like his father. However, in October 1957 everything changes when the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, goes into orbit. When Homer sees the Soviet satellite streak overhead, he becomes inspired to learn how to build rockets. With the help of his friends, and the local nerd, Homer sets to do just that by trial and a lot of error. Unfortunately, most of the town, and especially Homer's father, thinks that they are wasting their time. Only one teacher understands their efforts and lets them know that they could become contenders in the national science fair with college scholarships being the prize. Now the gang must learn to perfect their craft and overcome the many problems facing them as they shoot for the stars.

Wrong Turn

Chris crashes into a carload of other young people, and the group of stranded motorists is soon lost in the woods of West Virginia, where they're hunted by three cannibalistic mountain men who are grossly disfigured by generations of inbreeding.

The Last Sin Eater

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia.

Matewan

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

The Devil All the Time

In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters converge around young Arvin Russell as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family.

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines

A small West Virginia town is hosting the legendary Mountain Man Festival on Halloween, where throngs of costumed party goers gather for a wild night of music and mischief. But an inbred family of hillbilly cannibals kill the fun when they trick and treat themselves to a group of visiting college students.

Lawless

In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, the lookout. Though the local police have taken bribes and left the brothers alone, a violent war erupts when a sadistic lawman from Chicago arrives and tries to shut down the Bondurants operation.

No Drums, No Bugles

During the Civil War, a conscientious objector is forced to flee to the woods of West Virginia to avoid being sent into combat where he would be forced to kill, which he is adamantly against. He sets up shelter in a cave and is warily accepted by his new "neighbors"--the animals who live in the vicinity.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

A group of friends take refuge in a deserted sanatorium after they are left stranded in a snowstorm. Later, the place becomes a death trap when man-eating cannibals surround them.

Christy

Christy Martin never imagined life beyond her small-town roots in West Virginia—until she discovered a knack for punching people. Fueled by grit, raw determination, and an unshakable desire to win, she charges into the world of boxing under the guidance of her trainer and manager-turned-husband, Jim. But while Christy flaunts a fiery persona in the ring, her toughest battles unfold outside it—confronting family, identity, and a relationship that just might become life-or-death.

Dark Waters

A tenacious attorney uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths to one of the world's largest corporations. In the process, he risks everything — his future, his family, and his own life — to expose the truth.

Wind and Bone

a woman on the run joins a group of college students in rural WV, where they come face to face with the Wendigo.

The Dion Brothers

Two rural West Virginia brothers leave home, rob an armored car and become fugitives.

Leaving D.C.

After 20 years of living in Washington, D.C., Mark Klein seeks much-needed solace by moving to the remote wilds of West Virginia. To ease his loneliness, he sends regular video updates to members of his OCD-support group back in the city. But Mark gradually realizes that despite his new, isolated setting, he may not be alone. From the endless woods surrounding his home, something else is watching.