Jonestown: Paradise Lost is a documentary on the final days of Jonestown, the Peoples Temple, and Jim Jones. From eyewitness and survivor accounts, it recreates the last week before the mass murder-suicide on November 18, 1978.
Coming in close to 30 years after the Jonestown Massacre, this is a dramatic retelling (with actual footage mixed in) of the fateful hours leading to the end of the People’s Temple Agricultural Project. Rick Roberts give a strong performance as Jones, a man who is seeing is dream of a socialist paradise dissolve after finding out more and more of his “people” want to defect once the horrid conditions and practices are brought to light. The real powerhouse is Greg Elland as Congressman Leo Ryan, playing him as an unnervingly cool and heroic would-be savior, only to end as a victim to one of the darkest days in United States history.