HAYNESVILLE: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy takes place in the Louisiana backwoods, and follows the momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world). The film examines the historic find (a formation called the “Haynesville Shale”) from the personal level as well as from the higher perspective of the current energy picture and pending energy future.

As the Haynesville boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community’s environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a Christian school and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described “country boy” finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land to an oil company’s offer to make him a millionaire.

From a broader perspective, HAYNESVILLE explores the current energy situation and what something the scale of the Haynesville (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) could mean to the United States’ energy picture. In a never-seen-before on-screen discussion, environmentalists, academics and oil and gas industry folks hash out the idea of trying to find cleaner energy sources and how this natural gas could possibly help provide an energy answer.

BONUS: HAYNESVILLE will be preceded by a short film about a different kind of gas: SELTZER WORKS directed by Jessica Edwards, fresh from its festival appearances at SXSW, Full Frame & Hot Docs.