Williston, N.D. (AP) A documentary looking at the gritty side of life in the North Dakota oil boomtown of Williston is set to begin screenings across the country on Oct. 10.
"The Overnighters'' follows a Lutheran pastor who allowed down-and-out migrant workers to sleep in his church. That move stoked tensions with a local community that had been a small, isolated farming town just a few years before.
The film won the special jury award for intuitive filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Director Jesse Moss followed the pastor for a year and a half. Moss says he often slept in the church alongside the workers. Moss says that while many workers were lured to western North Dakota by jobs, others were seeking salvation and reinvention.