Salt Lake City, USA - It's estimated that more than a thousand young men and women -- mostly men -- have escaped or been thrown out of the community known as "The Crick," the towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., dominated by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints sect.
Getting those young adults to talk about their lives in and out of "The Crick" was difficult, say the filmmakers who have profiled some of those exiled teens for the documentary "Sons of Perdition."
"The kids are taught that everyone outside their community is evil, especially those in the media," said Tyler Measom, who co-directed the documentary, which had its world premiere last weekend at New York City's Tribeca Film Festival.
Measom and co-director Jennilyn Merten focus on several teen boys who left the FLDS community and now live in the St. George area. The film shows them over a two-year period, trying to adjust to life outside the influence of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and trying to help other family members escape the polygamous life.
In took several months for the youths to trust the filmmakers. "Because of our background, and because we were ex-Mormon, we could relate with them," he said.
Measom grew up in Pleasant Grove, Utah, attended Utah Valley University and established himself making commercials and industrial films in Salt Lake City. (Measom also produced the prison drama "Take," starring Minnie Driver and Jeremy Renner.) Merten, raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Oregon, attended Brigham Young University before leaving the LDS Church. (She's now working toward her Ph.D. in American studies at the University of Utah, though she is on leave while making the movie.)
Jeffs is seen in the film only in news footage, and heard mostly in his recorded sermons. "Warren Jeffs is like the shark in 'Jaws' -- you never really see the full piece of it," Measom said in a phone interview from New York, where he and Merten were finishing the audio mix on the film before the premiere screening.
Merten said the film doesn't delve too deeply into the doctrinal differences between the mainstream LDS church and the FLDS sect. "We really wanted to tell more of a character study," Merten said. "We say it's a breakaway group and leave it at that."
Measom and Merten know there is fascination with Mormonism and the FLDS outside Utah, as evidenced by the quick sell-out of all four screenings at Tribeca. ("Sons of Perdition" will air in May on the BBC in the United Kingdom. U.S. television and potential theatrical rights are still to be negotiated.)
With that fascination come stereotypes, though. "When we're out here in New York," Merten said, "everybody says, 'You're from Utah. Oh, you're a polygamist.' We get a little bit tired of that."