Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Banking on Heaven
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
2005 · FILM

Banking on Heaven

Polygamy in the heartland of the American West

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
90 min
Documentary

Synopsis

A hard-hitting documentary on the largest polygamous cult in the U.S., the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), located right on the Utah-Arizona border. This film shows how women and girls are denied education and other civil rights, and are treated as slaves who are married off to the polygamous men of the cult. It investigates the role of Warren Jeffs, Head "Prophet" of the FLDS, and offers a searing indictment of his treatment of fellow cult members. It also addresses the lack of outrage from the mainstream Mormon church as well as the government's collective failure to take care of the problems that are plaguing many polygamists caught in this web of greed and deceit. See how a small group of courageous filmmakers managed to make their way into a town which shuns outsiders--particularly ones with movie cameras--and get damning testimonials from some of the women of this cult.

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Laurie AllenShot by Thomas Mcarthur

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).

Help complete this page

We’re missing mpaa rating, logline. Sign in to add what you know.