Three Films About Growing What Lasts

The online premiere is here.

Three short documentaries—produced in 2024 by Thriving Communities and premiered in 2025 through screenings in Michigan, Iowa, and Utah, and at our annual Thriving Gathering—are streaming today. They follow people building something essential: local food systems rooted in trust, land, and community care.

Today is MLK Day, which feels like the right moment to share these stories widely. Not because they're about grand gestures, but because they show what sustained service actually looks like when people commit to it year after year, season after season.

Each story reveals what happens when communities invest in their own resilience: farmers growing healthy food and each other's capacity, neighborhoods reclaiming ownership of their food supply, young people carrying forward legacies while creating their own.

Watch the Films

Rising, Rooted, and Resilient — Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network

Malik Yakini and DBCFSN's decades-long work to build food sovereignty in Detroit, culminating in the 2024 opening of the Detroit People's Food Co-op—a community-owned grocery store 14 years in the making. In a city where nearly 70% of residents lack food security, this represents a fundamental shift: communities deciding what food access looks like on their own terms. [Watch]

Rooted in Community — Red Acre Farm, Utah

Sara Patterson carries forward her great-grandmother's farming legacy, rebuilding after devastating loss—a fire that destroyed her home and then the loss of her father. She could have stopped. Instead, she grew Red Acre Farm into a CSA serving local families with raw milk, dairy, meat, and produce. Her story is about what it means to continue when continuation isn't guaranteed. [Watch]

Land and Heart — Iowa farmer Corbin Scholz

A young organic farmer who left pre-med to grow vegetables, now managing two farms and creating pathways for more women to lead in agriculture. Her CSA went from 30 members to 150—because people trust where their food comes from when they know who grows it. She's not just feeding families; she's building infrastructure for the next generation of female farmers. [Watch]

These aren't aspirational someday stories. They're about the work happening now—the kind that requires showing up when it's hard, when it's slow, when nobody's watching. The kind that changes what's possible for everyone who comes after.

If one film stays with you, share it. That's how these stories reach the people who need them.

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