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Kirsten Dunst, Henry Cavill, Mike Faist, Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Dev Patel, and Bill Skarsgård

Photo: A24, Lionsgate, Amazon MGM, Universal, Lionsgate

As is its wont, March was in like a lion and out like a lamb, leaving behind a bevy of blockbuster movies in its wake. But this lamb’s...

Documentarian Dawn Mikkelson, known for her work on ”Finding Her Beat,” “Risking Light” and “The Red Tail,” is exploring the lives of six of the Minnesota RollerGirls in her upcoming documentary, “Minnesota Mean.”

The documentary feature will make its world premiere at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival on April 15 followed by screenings at the Florida Film Festival on April 17 and the Sunscreen Film Festival on April 29.

‘Minnesota Mean’ is a riveting human drama about the pounding heart of roller derby: powerful, self-sufficient women from all walks of life and identity,” the doc’s logline reads. “It’s a vital and relevant story of triumph, loss, strength, determination, and a search for balance between individuality and community.”

The documentary follows a year-in-the-lives of six core members of one of the most competitive roller derby teams in the world, the Minnesota RollerGirls. The roller derby athletes are seen training for...

“It’s Only Life After All,” a documentary about the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls, is for fans only. For those who are not fans, and for those who only dimly remember their initial albums in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this Sundance Film Festival Opening Night entry is a rambling, unrevealing look at their lives and careers that director Alexandria Bombach allows to run over two hours without focusing her material.

Amy Ray and Emily Saliers met in grammar school, and Saliers was one grade ahead of Ray. During the extensive interviews with them in this movie, a hazy picture emerges of Ray as the driving force of their act, or the one with the most ambition, and Saliers as the more elusive or distant of the two. They came up the hard way through gigs in bars and clubs, and their breakout hit was the song “Closer to...

Bon Iver, Low’s Alan Sparhawk, and Mumu Fresh are among the artists set to play the one-day Water Is Life: Stop Line 3 festival, which will benefit efforts to fight the construction of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.

Water Is Life will take place on August 18th at Bayfront Park in Duluth, Minnesota. The lineup will feature a mix of artists, poets, and indigenous leaders, with all proceeds going to the indigenous woman-led non-profit, Honor the Earth. The Line 3 pipeline, which is being built by Enbridge, cuts through over 200 bodies of water,...

Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls are among the many voices featured on “No More Pipeline Blues (On this Land Where We Belong),” out on Earth Day (April 22nd) via Rock the Cause Records.

The track supports the ongoing fight against Minnesota’s “Line 3” tar sands oil pipeline, which cuts through more than 200 bodies of water, including the Mississippi River. The resistance is heavily led by indigenous women, including activist Winona Laduke — who has spent the last eight years trying to prevent the construction of Line 3.

In addition to Raitt,...

The oil and gas industry was hit with yet another lawsuit when Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced this week that his office is suing two of the nation’s largest oil companies, and the oil industry’s trade group, for a “30 year campaign of deception” about the impacts of climate change.

At a press conference in Saint Paul, Ellison stated that Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute “knowingly directed, conducted and funded a campaign to deceive and defraud Minnesotans and Americans” about the effects of fossil fuels on the environment.

In mid-March, as major cities began locking down, environmentalist and Rolling Stone contributor Bill McKibben called activist Winona Laduke, both in “different corners of rural America with low bandwidth,” to talk about climate change, JPMorgan Chase, and Laduke’s seven-year effort to stop the construction of an oil pipeline called Line 3.

Laduke lives on the White Earth reservation, part of the Ojibwe nation in northwestern Minnesota. She’s been a booming voice in Native American land rights for three decades, and in recent years that has intersected directly with campaigns against fossil fuels.