PBS gives US The Interrupters for Valentine's Day

The Interrupters will have its US television premiere on PBS FRONTLINE at 9pm on February 14th 2012. The US DVD and digital versions of the film will be made available following the broadcast.

PBS announced the air date as it unveiled its broadcast schedule for Black History Month 2012. We're hoping you will all help spread the love by watching and telling us what you think!

The news comes directly after the film's astonishingly successful UK broadcast on BBC Storyville last week, and following yesterday's announcement by The New Yorker's Richard Brody that The Interrupters was his #11 pick of the year's best films (the highest ranking US documentary on the list). Even more impressively, TIME magazine's Richard Corliss placed violence interrupter Ameena Matthews at #5 on his list of "the year's top 10 movie performances" - of course, she was the only subject of a documentary on that list.

In a fun holiday tribute to the film, Spout critic Christopher Campbell also mentioned the film in his list of "10 Impossible Gift Ideas Based on Recent Movies", stating "Is peace a possibility in this world? Steve James' "The Interrupters" makes it seem so, if not exactly easily, by documenting the efforts of Chicago's CeaseFire initiative and its "violence interrupters" who try to prevent gang fights and retaliation plots around the city... If there's any gift on this list I'd prefer to be made possible, it's this one."

The Interrupters is still on release in theaters. The film opens tomorrow in Dallas at the Angelika and in Edmonton at the Gameau theater, before returning for a 5th week at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago from December 16th-22nd. More screenings are coming in 2012.