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Development
2017
2019

At the Ready

IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee

  • Maisie Crow, Director/Producer
  • Hillary Pierce, Producer
  • Abbie Perrault, Producer
A group of high school students are in training, wearing tactical vest, helmets and fake guns

About the Project

Home to one of the region's largest law enforcement education programs, students at Horizon High School in El Paso train to become police officers and Border Patrol agents as they discover the realities of their dream jobs may be at odds with the truths and people they hold most dear.

Woman with straight brown hair wearing a brown shirt and brown hat, looking off to her right in the distanceMaisie Crow, Director/Producer

After a successful career as an award­-winning photojournalist, Maisie turned her attention to filmmaking. In 2018, her documentary, JACKSON, received a News and Documentary Emmy award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. JACKSON had its broadcast premiere on Showtime. In 2014 her short film, THE LAST CLINIC, was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy. In 2012, her short film, HALF LIVES: THE CHERNOBLYL WORKERS NOW, won the Overseas Press Club Award for Video Journalism, and in 2010, her short film A LIFE ALONE was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy.

 

Woman with curly brown hair, sitting with arms crossed rested in front, wearing a black shirtAbbie Perrault, Producer

Abbie Perrault is a Texas-based journalist and documentary producer. She is the Managing Editor of The Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International newspapers in Marfa, Texas. She was the Impact Producer on the Emmy-award winning documentary Jackson (Showtime), and an associate producer on The Intercept's short documentary An Abortion in Mississippi. Perrault is a producer on the upcoming documentary At the Ready. Her work has been supported by the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, IFP, the Catapult Film Fund, the Ford Foundation, XTR and the Austin Film Society, and she is an alumna of New Orleans Film Society's Southern Producers Lab.

 

Woman with brown curly hair in a red blouse, looking back over her left shoulder at the cameraHillary Pierce, Producer

Hillary Pierce is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker currently based in Marfa, Texas. Pierce spent several years working in scripted film and television in her native North Carolina before relocating to New York City to begin a career in documentary film under the tutelage of Direct Cinema pioneer Albert Maysles. Pierce has spent the better part of the last decade producing feature documentaries in Texas, including Keith Maitland's 2016 films TOWER and A SONG FOR YOU: THE AUSTIN CITY LIMITS STORY and Ben Masters' 2019 THE RIVER AND THE WALL. TOWER won the Grand Jury Documentary Prize and Audience Award at SXSW in 2016, broadcast nationally on PBS’ Independent Lens, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and won the 2018 Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. THE RIVER AND THE WALL premiered at SXSW in 2019 and won the Louis Black Lone Star Award. It was released theatrically and digitally in May of 2019 and broadcast on Starz the following October. THE RIVER AND THE WALL was nominated for the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary.