Matthew Dougherty

Through the lens of his own recovery, a filmmaker offers an intimate look inside the billion dollar addiction treatment industry where young people are bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a system designed to keep them sick.

Since 1987, and for almost three decades, New York cinephiles had access to a vast treasure trove of rare films thanks to Kim's Video, a small empire run by Yongman Kim, an enigmatic character who amassed more than fifty thousand VHS tapes.

In 1989, Julie Thayer, a wealthy mother from New York City, went to the Swiss Alps to have her ego destroyed. The man she chose for the job was U.G. Krishnamurti, a radical Indian anti-guru who refused followers, refused donations, and told everyone who came to him to go away. Julie stayed — and filmed everything. The Natural State is built from that archive, hundreds of hours unseen for decades, and from the private journals Julie kept as U.G.'s psychological "blasting" carried her from states of ecstasy to the brink of devastation.

Lot Lizard is a feature documentary about truck stop sex workers in America. There are three million truck drivers and thousands of truck stops throughout the United States. Many of them are frequented by sex workers who truck drivers refer to as lot lizards. The film follows Jennifer, a recovering sex worker who is trying to get her life back on track, Bobby, a man struggling to come to grips with his girlfriend's livelihood, and Betty, an aging sex worker who makes no apologies for her lifestyle. These intimate portraits hint at a broader story about America, how it deals with its 'derelicts,' and how we are implicated as consumers.