"Essential viewing for anyone with an appreciation for small-town stories" - Chicago Tribune "Amazing. Two enthusiastic thumbs way up!" - Onion AV Club "Simply one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in recent years." - TheFilmYap.com "A touching and full-bodied cinematic portrait of an entire small city, told through the individual faces and stories of the people who lived there mid-century... The story is universal. It would do some good for everyone in this country to take an hour and six minutes and watch this documentary — an hour and six minutes to reconnect with our roots, our heritage — and set our future paths a little straighter."

La Porte, Indiana, begins and ends as a series of photographs, and though that lends itself to the “pictures are worth a thousand words” cliché, it also proves why the cliché exists. Taken by a local photographer, Frank C. Pease, the pictures wound up in the back room of diner, and almost in a dumpster. Though we start with the subjects of the photos—children now grown—sharing their memories of getting the portraits taken, the film is far from a trip down memory lane. These stories are just the beginning as we quickly get beyond their pictures and into their lives, and through them we meet the other people of La Porte. As these different characters’ stories begin to echo each other across generations. We hear an older couple talking while a young couple in love drives; a scene of a young woman getting dressed for her wedding is intercut with old portraits of brides and weddings. Director Joe Beshenkovsky shows La Porte as a kind of everyplace, as if you could go and feel right at home because it’s just like where you’re from. As one character says, “It’s like looking at a stream. The stream looks the same; the water in the stream is different.” Though a great profile of the town and its people, it becomes more than that. La Porte, Indiana is powerful look at how our lives and histories connect and mirror. Everyone and everyplace is different, but we’re all still in the same stream.