Madsen Minax
After a long absence, filmmaker Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Through first-person cinema vérité and genre-bending storytelling, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.