Given that Wrangell, Alaska, an island town at the southern end of the state, was named after Russian explorer Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel, it's perhaps only fitting that a trio of people not from there have made a new documentary celebrating the place.
It all started in the summer of 2024 when Sam Pausman, originally from Maine, took a job at the Wrangell Sentinel, the oldest continuously publishing newspaper in Alaska, in print since 1902 and now weekly. He was immediately struck by the local color and regaled his childhood friend Skyler Piltch over the Christmas holidays that year.
Eventually, Pausman and Piltch brought in Katie Liebert to help produce and direct what turned out to be a 20-minute documentary short. Titled Walk Gently on This Land, the film aims to capture the spirit of Wrangell and Wrangell Island through the lives of teacher Barb Neyman, cultural historians Mike Hoyt and Esther Aaltséen Reese, sawmill operator Mike Allen Jr. and the family that owns Canoe Lagoon Oysters.
All three filmmakers are based in Southern California. Ironically, Pausman ended his time at the Wrangell Sentinel in 2025 just before the film was shot last spring on the island, taking a job as a food and culture writer with USA Today. He has just recently decided to leave daily newspaper journalism in favor of pursuing documentary filmmaking full-time.
Wrangell, which currently has a population of around 2,000, will host the premiere of Walk Gently on This Land as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary. The movie will screen Sunday July 5th at The Nolan Center.
"At the end of the day, after the premiere at The Nolan Center, you could put the film on a thumb drive and bury it six feet in the ground and have no one see it after that and I'd be just as happy," Pausman told his one-time employer. "To me, this has always been for the people of Wrangell."
Pausman's time in the town was definitely shorter than the years spent in the fictitious location of Cicely, Alaska by Rob Morrow's Dr. Joel Fleischer in the beloved 1990-1995 CBS series Northern Exposure. But the resulting project about a unique place and its cast of characters has a similar feel to it and could well strike a broad chord when it eventually hits the film festival circuit.
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