Welcome to Leith

In 2012, a stranger came to a small town (population around 20) in North Dakota and began buying up property. Initially, people thought that the purchases were related to the state's oil boom, but the stranger—Craig Cobb—was actually a white supremacist with a plan to make Leith the center of his movement. Soon others with similar beliefs began to arrive, and locals found themselves in a struggle for control as the newcomers began marking their homes with fascist and racist symbols and Cobb announced his intention to take over the town government, undertaking armed street patrols to intimidate anyone who opposed him. Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker's documentary plays like a real-life thriller as it follows the back-and-forth strategies of the two sides. At the same time, Welcome to Leith is as scary as any Hollywood movie about ordinary folk who are threatened by a malevolent predator. Here, Cobb and his acolyte Kynan Dutton emerge as frighteningly cunning and articulate villains, while townsmen like Mayor Ryan Schock and Councilman Lee Cook appear to be desperate men under siege. In the process of telling this bizarre true story, the film also raises disturbing questions about home-grown extremism, free speech rights, and the effort required to preserve a traditional society in the face of outside forces that are determined to destroy it. Both nerve-wracking and thought-provoking, Welcome to Leith is infuriating and sobering in equal measure. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)