Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern

Touching, gentle documentary, made by a woman about her parents and family, as they face the likely loss of the family farm to the awful economics of modern agricultural life.

Done with a light touch and sense of humor which keeps the film from ever becoming maudlin, and reveals that sometimes life's twists and turns, even the bad ones, lead us to places that are OK after all.

If there's any weakness to the film, it's that sometimes in avoiding the sentimental it misses a bit of the emotion, and the fascinating insight it provides into the economic realities of family farming (as opposed to the romantic idea so many outsiders have) gets slightly short shrift. It would be great to understand even more than the tantalizing bits here why so many family farmers can't make it.