Three Texas directors head back to their hometowns and focus their cameras on stories that affect their cities in HBO’s documentary series God Save Texas. Inspired by Lawrence Wright’s God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, the three-part documentary focuses on Huntsville’s prisons, the impact of the oil industry in Houston, and immigration issues in El Paso.
Oscar nominee Richard Linklater directs God Save Texas: Hometown Prison premiering on Tuesday, February 27, 2024 at 9pm ET/PT. Part two, The Price of Oil, debuts on February 28th at 9pm ET/PT, followed by La Frontera at 10pm ET/PT.
HBO released the following descriptions of the documentary trilogy:
GOD SAVE TEXAS: HOMETOWN PRISON – Huntsville is the capital of the Texas prison colossus, with seven prisons in the area and one-quarter of the town’s adult population incarcerated. In his second documentary, five-time Oscar nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater, whose Huntsville background has informed several of his feature films, takes on the divisive and heated issues of the penal system in his home state, which upholds the death penalty despite waning popularity and where nearly 1,000 people in Huntsville alone have been legally put to death.
For many Huntsville locals, the prisons occupy another universe distinct from their own. For others, they provide much-needed employment. In God Save Texas: Hometown Prison, Linklater chronicles the lives of everyday men and women whose lives are affected by the business of incarceration and death that looms over their town. In conversation with old friends and classmates, correctional officers and lawyers, death penalty advocates, and protestors, Linklater lays bare a thorny, symbiotic existence of the town with its incarcerated, painting a multi-faceted picture of the criminal justice system in Texas.
GOD SAVE TEXAS: THE PRICE OF OIL – In God Save Texas: The Price of Oil, Houston-born and raised filmmaker Alex Stapleton turns her lens on her hometown to chronicle the impact of the Texas oil industry on Houston residents, specifically Black and disenfranchised communities, including the lives of her own family, who arrived in Texas in the 1830s as slaves and have stayed in the state for nearly 200 years.
Tracing her personal story as a descendant of slave owners, Stapleton widens her focus to show how Black history is vital to the Texas oil boom, yet has largely been left out of the history books. Despite representing 13% of the U.S. population, Black and brown people only make up 6% of the oil and gas workforce, with few in leadership positions, and historically, their neighborhoods are more likely to suffer the encroachment of refineries and chemical plants. Residents of Pleasantville, a Houston housing community developed in 1948 for Black veterans and their families, and similar “fenceline” communities risk exposure to elevated levels of toxicity and pollution.
Illustrating that environmental racism is a civil rights issue, and by giving voice to the very people who face the human cost of Texas’ biggest money-maker, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil is a call for a long overdue reckoning.
GOD SAVE TEXAS: LA FRONTERA – In her poetic exploration of El Paso, Texas, Mexican American filmmaker Iliana Sosa unveils a city woven with vibrant Mexican heritage, its essence textured by the coexistence and division along the border shared with Juárez, Mexico.
As Sosa traces the fluctuating nature of America’s relationship to migrants from south of the border, she invokes the concept of “Nepantla,” a Nahuatl word for a state of “in-between-ness,” suggesting a frontier land with blurred edges where first-generation immigrant children straddle two cultures, navigating a complex sense of identity and belonging.
Where immigrants were once brought in as legal guest workers, border policies and Covid regulations now restrict the flow of traffic, impacting the lives of many families who live on opposite sides of the divide; recent gentrification further risks obliterating historic Mexican neighborhoods and lifestyles. In God Save Texas: La Frontera, Sosa posits that a shared culture and a fluidity between the countries has always enriched El Paso, giving rise to a humanity and unique hybridity that allowed the city to come together and heal in the wake of the 2019 Walmart tragedy.
