Big news!!

The documentary is finished! Our World Premiere will take place April 18 at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. A limited number of tickets remain for our Premiere Week screenings. Special guests will be in attendance for a Q&A at the screening April 18 and 19, including Patty and Jerry Wetterling, Joy Baker, Jared Scheierl, and director Chris Newberry. 

4/16 UPDATE: due to sold out screenings April 18 & 19, the film festival has added an additional screening Wednesday 4/22 at 7pm. 

Find tickets and learn more here.

What is the Jacob Wetterling documentary?

In October 1989, on a quiet road in St. Joseph, Minnesota, Jacob Wetterling was abducted by a masked gunman while riding his bike home from the store. For 27 years, the question of what happened to Jacob hung over the community like a dark cloud. Haunting as it was, Jacob served as an inspiration for tremendous good, with his family leading a movement to reform laws and advocating for prevention of crimes against children.

In 2015, our team of Minneapolis-based filmmakers embarked on a documentary project that would lead us on a truly unexpected journey. After meeting several times with Jacob's parents, we started filming on what turned out to be the very week the perpetrator was finally arrested.

In the years since, we have followed the breaking news in the case, and focused on the ceaseless search for Jacob, the wide-reaching impacts of Jacob's story, and the reverberating effects the crime has had on several people at the very center of it. In the end, we feel we have succeeded in producing a film that honors Jacob's memory by telling a truthful, haunting, but ultimately hopeful tale, of how an unthinkable crime touched so many lives.

To learn more about director Chris Newberry's approach to the Wetterling project, check out this early article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.