Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Premiering Monday, May 15 on HBO, as well as HBO Now and HBO Go, is Erin Lee Carr's Mommy Dead and Dearest, a true-crime mystery about a mother and daughter who were thought to be living a fairy tale life. The New York Times writes: "if you were still luxuriating in the feel-good aura of Mother's Day, this disturbing film will put an end to that."
Also premiering Monday, May 15 at 10pm on Independent Lens, Maya Zinshtein's Forever Pure looks at a national scandal involving the Beitar Jerusalem Football Club in Israel, a team that had never signed an Arab player. The Hollywood Reporter calls it "one hell of a documentary."
Currently streaming on Netflix is Peter and the Farm, a portrait of grizzled, hard-drinking organic farmer Peter Dunning. According to Indiewire, "it's a wooly meditation on mortality, a movie about a man who sees his farm as an extension of his body and a reflection of his soul."
Also streaming on Netflix: City of Trees, from producer (and recent Documentary magazine contributor) Lance Kramer, about a grassroots nonprofit trying to create jobs in Washington D.C. through a tree-planting program.