The Quiet Part

Directed by: Rachel Lauren Mueller
Produced by: Ariel Tilson

Stage:
- Post Production
Locations:
- Minnesota, United States,
- Iceland
Updated: July 20, 2026
Project Type:
- Feature
Project Style:
- Observational
Theme Subject:

Logline

When a pagan white supremacist group takes root in a quiet American farming town, it sparks an intense struggle over who has the right to belong, offering a disturbing warning about the normalization of extremism.

Synopsis

With exclusive access, the feature documentary THE QUIET PART chronicles the arrival of a pagan white supremacist group in a rural American town through the eyes of residents who oppose them, and others who defend them. But what begins as passionate resistance, transforms into passive acceptance as the group’s “good neighbor” strategy seduces some and resigns others to give up on community solidarity.

The film follows an interracial family in this majority

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The film follows an interracial family in this majority white town who must deliberate how to safely raise their children within the looming shadow of an extremist group. Filmed over five years, the film explores how this community comes to tolerate ideologies they once condemned, revealing how white supremacy embeds itself not only in fringe groups, but in the everyday choices of ordinary people and a primal longing to belong. And yet, glimpses of hope appear in unlikely places.

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Background

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The number of white nationalist groups in the U.S. has reached historic highs, with extremist paganism among the fastest-growing demographics. The Asatru Folk Assembly (A.F.A.) — a whites-only, anti-Semitic and homophobic religious group — seeks to build a white ethnostate by cloaking racist ideology in Norse paganism and using religious freedom as constitutional cover. With 31 U.S. chapters and international reach, the A.F.A. serves as a gateway to more violent groups.

Their strategy is subtle but effective: target rural towns left vulnerable by economic decline and social fragmentation and offer “white” people immortality through warrior gods like Odin and Thor. They frame their mission as defense against supposed white erasure.

THE QUIET PART chronicles how this ideology embeds itself in plain sight, focusing on Murdock, Minnesota, population 278. With the arrival of industrial agriculture, the family farms, once vital to the social fabric of the town, closed and young people fled to the cities. Not even a post office remains.

The context in Minnesota makes this story particularly resonant: Norse mythology resonates here as a place settled by Scandinavians, the state faces some of the starkest racial disparities in the nation, and was the epicenter of the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder. All of this contributed to the spark that ignited the conflict in 2020.

While the film is rooted in Murdock, it also situates Ásatrú in context – exploring how meaningful cultural identities can be nurtured without co-option, and how the absence of such grounding leaves communities vulnerable.

Founded in Iceland, Ásatrú Norse mythology is a multicultural, nature-based religion, and was the first religion in Iceland to perform gay marriages. But the A.F.A. was not the first to co-opt Norse mythology – that began with the Nazis.

As extremist ideas edge into the mainstream, this story asks: What makes a community vulnerable to extremism? What happens when cultural belonging is weaponized? And what does it take to build a community where everyone feels they truly belong?

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Style & Tone

THE QUIET PART unfolds largely in the present, tracing a subtle but devastating arc from conflict, to resignation, to acceptance. The narrative is grounded in observational scenes and in-situ interviews, paired with formal interviews used as voiceover. These internal reflections, layered over images of daily life, seasonal shifts, and recurring landscapes, invite the audience to live alongside participants as they question their place in a town changing beneath their

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The Duruji family—Christian, Catheryn, and their daughters—form the emotional spine of the film. Around them, a rotating chorus of Murdock residents moves in and out of the story, reflecting how community sentiment toward the Asatru Folk Assembly evolves over time. Together, these interwoven narratives capture the slow, granular process through which ideology takes hold and resistance either transforms or fades.

The director occasionally interjects from behind the camera to name tensions that otherwise remain unspoken. In one scene, at an A.F.A. permit reauthorization meeting where she is the only attendee besides the all-white, all-male city council, the director is the only person who asks pointed questions about the group’s failure to comply with permit requirements. These moments are rare but purposeful, underscoring the film’s moral inquiry, the role of documentation as a form of resistance, and the filmmaker’s ethical commitment to bearing witness.

Archival materials—including a decade of the A.F.A.’s online content, livestreams, and speeches—are woven in sparingly to reveal how the group frames its mission. Rather than platforming extremism, this footage exposes the mechanisms by which hate is softened and made palatable, contrasting the A.F.A.’s public “good neighbor” posture with its ideology of racial exclusion.

THE QUIET PART is also an experiment in deep listening, in which the land itself becomes a participant. Cornfields, dairy operations, and disappearing prairies reflect the economic systems that isolate and disempower rural communities, mirroring the social fractures at the film’s core. Combine harvesters consuming corn become a visual metaphor for extraction-based systems—economic and ideological—that wear communities down. Footage shot in Iceland, at the rift between the European and North American tectonic plates, gestures toward an American identity severed from ancestral roots and the deeper ruptures of settler colonialism.

These are not merely aesthetic choices but part of a storytelling language rooted in slow discovery over years. Visual motifs of land and labor offer access to participants’ inner lives, resisting the flattening effects of politicized discourse. Artist and editor Shannon Kennedy collaborates closely to shape this approach.

A restrained, minimalist string score by Icelandic composer Snorri Hallgrímsson, paired with immersive sound design, creates a quiet tension that never overwhelms the story.

This project is the result of years of embedded, relational filmmaking, interrogating how hate continues to take root in American soil.

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Team

Rachel Lauren Mueller

Director

Team

Rachel Lauren Mueller

Director

Rachel Lauren Mueller is an award-winning documentary director and cinematographer whose films focus on themes of spirituality, identity and rural life. With her background in anthropology and investigative journalism, she creates films that interrogate power structures while embracing expansive imagination. Her work has been featured in Al Jazeera, The New York Times and PBS and covers topics such as abuse cover-ups in juvenile detention centers (8 DAYS AT WARE), pagan white supremacist take-overs of small towns (THE QUIET PART) and the repurposing of religious rites for queer people (FLESH OF HUMANS, FLESH OF ANGLES). Supporters of Rachel's films include the Ford Foundation, Film Independent, International Documentary Association, UnionDocs and IF/Then Shorts. She has a Master’s of Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. Rachel lives in Minneapolis where she tries, in vain, to encourage her wisteria to bloom.

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Ariel Tilson

Producer

Team

Ariel Tilson

Producer

Ariel Tilson (she/her) is a freelance documentary filmmaker and impact producer devoted to transformative storytelling through participant-driven narratives. Splitting her time between Minnesota and New York, her projects range from Emmy-nominated feature-length documentaries for broadcast through PBS, to nationally distributed digital video content. Her work has been featured at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as part of their Women With Vision series, and screened in international film festivals including Shorts on Tap and the Hill Country Film Festival. In partnership with nonprofits and community partners, she leads workshops on documentary impact and producing, and has presented on storytelling equity panels at the Media Technology & Gender Equality Conference and The Forum on Workplace Inclusion, among others. Her documentary work has been supported by the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Documentary fund, the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative grant, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund. She earned her graduate degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York City and received her undergraduate degree in Journalism and International Studies at The University of Kansas.

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Shannon Kennedy

Editor

Team

Shannon Kennedy

Editor

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The Quiet Part

Logline

Team

Rachel Lauren Mueller

Rachel Lauren Mueller

Ariel Tilson

Ariel Tilson

Shannon Kennedy

Shannon Kennedy

Our Ask