Welcome to Leith is a feature film offering a glimpse into a town struggling for sovereignty against one man's extremist vision. Leith, North Dakota is a registered ghost town of 24 people. Its inhabitants are mostly farmers or ranchers, with land passed down generation to generation. The town has an apocalyptic beauty set against a prairie backdrop of wide-open sky and fields of wheat.
In May of 2012, an outsider named Craig Cobb moved in and started buying up property. He accumulated twelve plots of land, some empty, some with houses in various states of disrepair. People figured he'd moved in to be close to the Bakken oil fields some 70 miles north. Turns out he was a notorious white separatist who was plotting a takeover of the city government. Shortly after his plans were unveiled, a family of fellow white separatists moved in to start fixing up his properties.
Filmed during an 8 month period documenting a white separatist's arrest for terrorizing the townspeople on an armed patrol and his subsequent release from jail six months later, Welcome to Leith is an eerie document of American DIY ideals played out in one of the most under populated states in the nation.