Susan Polis Shutz got the idea for her eighth and latest documentary over a cup of coffee and the morning news.

“I kind of got sick, there was so much hatred, anger and divisiveness, I almost stopped watching,” she told Colorado Politics. “I wondered, ‘Why is this happening? Why is our beautiful world being ruined? Why can’t we accept people for what they are?’ ”

After toying with several ideas, including a focus on prejudice, she decided to make a movie about love, compassion and understanding. Polis Shutz, the co-founder of the Boulder-based card company Blue Mountain Arts (and also the mother of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis), got to work.

“Love Wins Over Hate,” produced through her company IronZeal Films, is a psychological study of why people adopt hatred as an ideology. It features soul-baring interviews with former skinheads, KKK leaders, neo-Nazis and an extreme fundamentalist, each of whom decided to change when they realized the hurt they were causing. Polis Schutz also interviews a Holocaust survivor and a Sikh man whose family was attacked.

Transformation

When Chris Buckley, an Afghanistan and Iraq war veteran, returned to the United States, he felt marginalezed and lost. He became an Imperial Nighthawk with the Georgia White Knights, but then had a change of heart. In the documentary, he describes being beaten by members when he told them he was leaving.

“I got a good, old-fashioned ass-whipping. But I’ve been beat up before. I grew up with my dad. He beat me up all the time,” he said.

A home movie shows Buckley in black robes and a pointy black mask standing next to his son, a tiny version of himself, also dressed in robes and a mask with eyeholes. “White power!” Buckley says. “White power,” echoes his son.

Many of the former extremists Polis Schutz interviewed came from dysfunctional families, or were bullied or sexually abused as children.

“The common thread was their background, their vulnerability,” Polis Schutz said.

“I really hated the fact that I felt marginalized. That I was idealistic but nobody saw that in me,” explained Chris Picciolini, a former extremist-turned-peace advocate in the film. He said hate groups recruited him because they sensed that he was insecure. This feeling of belonging, he said, gave him power, which he used full circle, “The bullies that had picked on me for 14 years now would avoid me. And later I recruited them.”

Picciolini, who left the white supremacist movement, eventually earned a degree in international relations, now speaks worldwide about his experiences and leads counter-extremism groups. The life he has chosen hasn’t been easy. “I still get death threats,” he said.

Being raped at 14 by two white men left Shannon Foley Martinez festering with rage. “I wanted to hurt myself and anything and everyone I came in contact with,” she says in the film.

She said joining the white power movement validated that anger. “In some ways, it was a relief that I could take this really ineffable, unmanageable rage that I felt and give it focus.”

The “before” is Martinez on a couch giving a Heil Hitler salute. The “after” is Martinez on a couch joking around with her 7 kids. Being honest with them about her past, she said, will ensure their trust if they ever get to a dark place.

“There’s not very much they’re going to do that can be worse than their mom being a Nazi,” she said.

The only former white supremacist female in the documentary saidshe changed, in part, for her children.

“We all have access to the policy-makers of tomorrow,” the consultant and educator said. “The question is, what kind of tomorrow do we want?”

Polis Schutz initially had some hesitancy in associating with some of her subjects.

“I was scared at first to meet them,” she said. “They were violent and all and the worst of human behavior. But these guys turned their lives around and were so loving. I adore each of them.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 940 hate groups in the United States in 2019. Of these, there was a 55% increase in white supremacist groups and a 43% increase in anti-LGBTQ groups from 2017. The record high for hate groups in the U.S., according to the SPLC, happened in 2018 when it counted 1,020. The dip in 2019, the SPLC reasons, happened because of turmoil and community pressure in two of America’s neo-Nazi factions.

Though she’s a child of the turbulent ’60s, these, she said, are the worst of times. “There’s no comparison. We were protesting in the ’60s but there was no language. It was more about love than it was about hate back then, and now it’s more about hate than love.”

Movie-making during a pandemic

It took a year to make “Love Wins Over Hate,” which Polis Shutz saidwas “tremendously inefficient” because of the pandemic. Luckily, she finished up one-on-one interviews in March, and then went into isolation with her husband and partner, Stephen. “I have at least 50 hours of film, so that’s what I had to do via Skype was edit it down.”

She had planned to return to Colorado to finish the film, but the couple put a self-imposed ban on travel, she said.

Polis Schutz is proud of the way her son, Jared, has handled the pandemic and the ensuing protests in Colorado.

“He’s always been very compassionate, wanting to help people,” she said. She remembers when Polis was 11 years old, the California city where they lived wanted to develop a canyon near their home, and they were opposed to the idea. “They called us to see if we would come and speak. Jared overheard our conversation and asked, ‘Can I go?’ It was lawyers, including someone high up in the California bar who were saying there were skinks and homeless and snakes. Jared got up, in a little high voice and he said, ‘Have you ever walked in that canyon? I play in it every day and it’s beautiful.’ ”

Polis Schutz said the city voted not to develop and the mayor later told her it was because of her son’s speech.

One of her other documentaries, “Anyone and Everyone,” was inspired by Polis’ decision to come out as gay. She interviewed children and parents around the country to dissect the dynamics of LGBTQ families.

“It was heartbreaking. Kids were kicked out of their homes, there were suicides. It was my first movie and I did it to understand what goes on in families when they have a gay child,” she said.

Denver Rep. Leslie Herod also has a short appearance in the film as the first African-American LBGT elected official in Colorado.

“When I first started my career the one thing that I was told was to be careful about who knows that you are gay,” says Herod in the film, her narration over a photo of she and Polis on the West steps of the state Capitol. “And that’s nothing that you should have to repress. I want you to see me for who I am.”

“Love Wins Over Hate” debuts on public television stations across the country next week, including in Denver on KBDI-Channel 12 and KRMA-Channel 6, but Polis Schutz won’t be traveling to Colorado to promote it in person.

Instead, she has taken her son’s advice, speaking to reporters from her California home, and never going maskless when she does go outside.

“How hard is it to put a little mask on and possibly save the life of someone? That’s why Steve and I don’t go out. It’s dangerous,” she said. “Making a film is so fascinating, but it’s very hard work and very stressful, so I’m taking a bit of a break.”

“Love Wins Over Hate” will air at 7 p.m. Oct. 8, and 12 a.m., Oct. 9, on KBDI-Channel 12 and at 8 p.m., Oct. 29, on Rocky Mountain PBS. Watch a trailer of the film here.

This article has been updated.