The 21st-season opener features "Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North," an exploration of filmmaker Katrina Brown's slave-trading ancestors, the Rhode Island DeWolfs. She and nine relatives (including Tom DeWolf, author of "Inheriting the Trade") retrace the old slave-trading route, including stops in Bristol, R.I., Ghana and Cuba.

Chevigny follows twelve voters as they cast their ballots in an attempt to get their voices heard and their politician of choice elected. As a New York-based ex-felon casts his first vote at the age of fifty, an opinionated factory worker debates gay marriage with his fellow employees, and a harried pollster attempts to maintain both order and sanity as they day wears on and voters line up, Chevigny explores the increasingly tempestuous political climate of the United States by focusing on the diverse views of those who choose to take part in the electoral process.

Tommy Lee Jones narrates the story of Esequiel Hernández Jr., an 18-year-old American high-school student who was killed by U.S. Marines during an incident along the Texas-Mexico border in 1997. Included: interviews with his parents and friends, and the Marines on patrol.

South Dakota-born sculptor John Houser made history - and stirred up a wealth of controversy - for his successful attempt to create and mount the tallest bronze equestrian statue in the world. The controversy sprang largely from the subject: long-forgotten Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, branded a terrorist and a genocidal architect by some, praised as a Hispanic hero by others. With their documentary The Last Conquistador, filmmakers Cristina Ibarra and John Valadez plunge into the fray at the heart of this controversy and simply observe the quarreling factions, listening to the arguments as they keep another eye fixed on Houser during the sculpting process. He is depicted as a man on the verge of discovering an ambiguous truth about his subject that lies poised somewhere between two extreme interpretations.

The experiences of young Palestinian men who illegally work in the construction trade in the Israeli city of Modi'in. Included: their hopes for the future.

The workings of Japanese politics are chronicled through the eyes of a political neophyte who is chosen by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to run for a seat on the Kawasaki City Council.

The 1969 documentary "Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music" captures the Man in Black on stage and off. Included: performances with June Carter Cash and Bob Dylan.

A Chilean judge and one-time supporter of Augusto Pinochet undergoes a profound personal transformation after being chosen to investigate the former dictator and hearing firsthand about the atrocities committed by the General's regime throughout the 1970s and 80s. Judge Juan Guzman comes from a privileged background. His powerful, conservative parents were staunch opponents of the socialist Allende government that was overthrown by Pinochet's military coup in 1973, leaving many of his colleagues to doubt that he would truly dedicate himself to the task at hand. To the surprise of Guzman's critics, however, the judge traveled across Chile on a tireless mission to gather the facts and determine the general's culpability. Protected by a bulletproof vest and surrounded by bodyguards, Guzman speaks with survivors, scrutinizes evidence, exhumes bodies, and even interviews an aged and fragile Pinochet in his quest for the truth. The facts that Guzman unearths are both heartbreaking and deeply disturbing, and with Pinochet's health fast deteriorating, the quest to hold him accountable for the crimes his regime committed becomes a breathless race against time.

As Armando and Carlos Pena round up their five brothers on a mission to transport their mother's ashes to McAllen, Texas, Armondo's wife follows the siblings on their tender road trip while also exploring their unique migrant story and highlighting just what it means to live with the ghost of lost love.

"Critical Condition" chronicles the experiences of four Americans without health insurance, including a doorman battling a chronic-liver disease; a woman with Stage 3 ovarian cancer; a diabetic warehouse manager and a chef with a back deformity.