FILM SYNOPSIS
From the creators of the award-winning documentary POVERTY, INC. comes a new film about social and material poverty in the United States. POVERTY TRAP examines how big plans to end poverty broke the promise of America—and what communities are doing to renew it.
From the bulldozing of poor neighborhoods and the rise of public housing to the War on Poverty and today's sprawling social services network, many of the institutions created to fight poverty have instead kept people stuck. As Lee Moore of Jackson, Mississippi puts it: "It's hard to make it out."
Drawing on more than 130 interviews filmed across 16 states, the film traces a sweeping story of policy failure and lost communities, but also redemption—purpose after prison, restored dignity for the homeless, and revival around “a little garden” in South Dallas.
POVERTY TRAP exposes the tragedy of treating human struggle as a technical problem to be managed by bureaucracies and solved by experts. It points toward something different: that people are themselves the solution to poverty.
