Last Days On Lake Trinity (2025)

This short documentary was shortlisted in that category for this for the 2026 Academy Awards. South Florida is facing a housing crisis, and that is one focus that this documentary brings to light. In March of 2022, Trinity Broadcasting Network, who owned the land, informed residents of Lakeside Park Estates that they had until December 31, 2022 to move out. Cooley centers on three women–Nancy Sanderson, Laurie Laney, and Nancy Fleishman–as they begin their hunt for another place to live after, it appears, that the county cannot combat TBN’s order. There are three things that I noticed watching rather than listening to this story. The 1st is that the place that they have which is waterfront is very beautiful and would be very hard to replicate. The second is that the mobile homes that these women live in are well beyond their sell by date. They are living in conditions that would be condemned I believe and then the third is that they have very few financial options and so this is a story of David and Goliath where the corporation holds all the cards. At the beginning of the film, Laney tells us that her first big purchase was her mobile home, but the real sense of belonging came within the community of Lakeside. Community and the collective experience is at the heart of Trinity. Fleishman worked off and on for TBN for years, and the silence from the company is troubling, especially when she calls to speak to someone about following up on the help they allegedly said they would provide.