CJ Hunt’s The Neutral Ground is a rare first-person documentaries that manages avoid the snarky condescension of the format, due largely to Hunt’s genuine warmth and curiosity toward his interview subjects he follows the attempt to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The meat of the film provides a thorough overview of the debate over Confederate monuments, as well as an important corrective and accurate history over how they came to be. The tone throughout is playful and gentle without ever mocking or belittling monument supporters – yet all the while still challenging their egregious beliefs. As the film proceeds, it becomes more sincere and more genuinely moving as part of an attempt to honestly reckon with the history of slavery in this country and the desire to help people wake up from their own ignorance. It’s an emotionally powerful, incredibly sobering, and thoroughly entertaining film about a difficult subject that we need to be having as a country.