COLUMBUS, Ohio — This Is Pike County, the award-winning documentary by Cleveland filmmaker Laura Paglin, is slated to screen at the Wexner Center for the Arts.
The 78-minute film follows everyday life in and around Piketon after the April 2016 killings of eight members of the Rhoden and Gilley families. Paglin started visiting in 2017. She has said she arrived because of the murders and stayed because of the wider story of a rural county dealing with poverty, addiction, and isolation.
Ideastream Public Media interviewed Paglin when the film played the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. She described Pike County as a “forgotten corner of Ohio.” Reviews have noted that the murders enter the film well after viewers meet residents who are not named in the credits. IMDb lists the runtime at 1 hour, 18 minutes.
The Wexner Center, at 1871 N. High St. on Ohio State’s campus, is the first major Columbus venue attached to the film’s current run. Exact ticket times should be confirmed on wexarts.org, because festival and center calendars shift.
The legal case that first drew cameras to Pike County is still moving. An Ohio appeals court this summer ordered new sentencing hearings for two people already convicted, tying that dispute to testimony still needed in the remaining case against George “Billy” Wagner. Paglin’s film is not a trial documentary. It is a community portrait made in the years after the crime.
For Pike County residents who cannot get to Columbus, the practical question is whether a Waverly or Piketon encore follows the Wexner date. No local encore had been posted on the Pike County Historical Society public calendar as of this writing.
Check wexarts.org for showtimes and prices. The Wexner Center’s standard film tickets have recently been listed at $12 general admission, with lower prices for members, adults 55 and older, and students.
