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NR | 1h 24m | Documentary | 2026
In a memorable Wall Street Journal article titled “America Needs Its Frontier Spirit,” commentator Daniel Henninger called risk-taking the “quintessential American trait that built the nation.”
After all, it was the frontiersmen who daringly transformed acres of wilderness into towns and then cities. Many people looked at the then-wastelands and saw only forbiddingly cold hill country or searingly hot deserts. Others saw opportunity. They then labored their entire lives to fulfill the land’s promise.
If risk-taking cedes ground to “a new ethos of commercial reserve and regulatory restriction,” Henninger predicted, “the upward arc of the U.S. ascendancy will flatten.” He wondered, “Maybe it already has.” That was in 2008.
Johnstown Galleria
Producer-director Brian Becker’s new documentary, “Mall Country,” spotlights America’s old-world frontier spirit in a contemporary frontier of sorts: America’s suburbia. The film follows the labors of one incurable risk-taker: Leo Karruli, owner and operator of the Johnstown Galleria.
Everyone saw that abandoned mall in Pennsylvania as yet another sign of a dying mall industry. However, Leo saw in it—surprise, surprise—a bright future.
Leo arrived in America as a young man, fleeing communism in Albania. He and his wife, Irene, built a thriving restaurant business before buying the Galleria. The small mall had, over time, been deserted by its owners, store tenants, and customers.
Why deserted? The flood that struck Johnstown in the 1970s and the subsequent closure of its steel mills spurred a slow exodus. A single mill, Bethlehem Steel, once employed as many as 20,000 men; now, Johnstown’s entire population is barely 20,000.
Becker tells of Leo’s heartbreakingly heroic effort since 2022 to bring store tenants and customers back to the Galleria. In no small way, he’s trying to revive the town’s beleaguered spirit. Leo bought the Galleria after it had wound up in foreclosure; this was well before the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated mall closures.
‘Endangered Hangout’
Becker’s fly-on-the-wall look at what his blurb calls “America’s most endangered hangout” offers the mall as a symbol of the frontier ethos. To him, the rugged individualism of entrepreneurs like Leo may be the reminder that some Americans need of their seemingly forgotten and forsaken frontier spirit.
Editor Maya Mumma intersperses Becker’s contemporary footage of Leo’s life in and around the mall with archival footage from ABC, BBC, and CNN about the origin and growth of America’s, and therefore the world’s, mall industry.
Poignantly, amid shots of Leo’s frenetic rescue operation around his mall, Mumma pauses to weave in Becker’s reflective shots of Leo’s silence and his solitude. That allows the film to breathe between its more sobering moments.
Director of photography Melissa Langer’s cinematography is so unobtrusive that it feels like the viewer, albeit vicariously, is accompanying Leo on his lonely trips up to the top of the mall to fix an air-conditioning glitch.
Viewers may feel like they’re attending his heart-to-heart chats with tenants to explain why the escalators aren’t fixed yet or why there’s no soap and paper in the restrooms. It’s like you’re sitting in on Leo’s interview with a town newspaper as he explains why he bought the Galleria’s Italian restaurant, just to try and arrest a further exodus of tenants and customers.
To temper his zooming in on the minutiae of Leo’s mall, Becker zooms out, too, mulling over the larger picture. He packs a lot in. He reminds viewers that it isn’t big chains that are the heartbeat of retail; it’s mom-and-pop stores.
It’s fearless families; Leo calls them “the roots.” Malls aren’t only about money, materialism, and make-believe needs. They’re also about the deeply human need for company and companionship. The need for balance doesn’t have to mean doing away with otherwise productive bastions of shared spaces.
Clients as Family
Recalling their early restaurant-running days, Irene observes that clients eventually become family. As if on cue, Becker puts faces to the names of Leo’s store tenants. Rosalinda Marks, James Barnes, and Brittani Banda run takeaway eateries in the food court. Young Chinese American entrepreneur Suhan Lin plans a game arcade, Griffin Lotson runs a bookstore, and Dave Luciew has a photo studio. All back Leo’s bid to revive the Galleria. Yet they’re aware of how dead it’s become.
Leo acts as cook, electrician, and even handyman because he can’t afford assistants. He’s also covering mall expenses because some tenants are missing rent payments; they themselves are short of paying customers.
Leo already has Hot Topic, AT&T, Claire’s, and other chain stores, but they aren’t enough. So, he and Irene are off to Las Vegas to woo big stores, like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, which are attending America’s biggest marketplace conference.
The stores’ representatives are patient enough and hear him out. Nevertheless, these department stores, as well as Burlington, American Eagle, and H&M, insist on a mall’s having at least 80 percent occupancy and a consistently high customer footfall before they commit to renting space there. The trouble is that Leo took over the Galleria when occupancy was a go-big-or-go-home 30 percent.
You’ll have to watch the film to find out what becomes of Leo’s impossible dream. Seeing him smile that toothy smile of his right through his mind-numbing struggle is something.
Leo is devastated when retail giant Sears threatens to turn its nearby store into a giant warehouse because it signals fewer Galleria customers. Still, he keeps muttering, as much to himself as to others: “I have guts. I take risk.”
As another store tenant quits, Leo, fighting back tears, says in what might well be frontier-speak: “I never give up. I keep working.”
You can watch “Mall Country” at NY’s SVA Theater on Nov. 12 and Village East by Angelika, on Nov. 15. It will be available to stream on DOC NYC Nov. 13-29.
‘Mall Country’
Documentary
Director: Brian Becker
Running Time: 1 hour, 24 minutes
Release Date: Nov. 12, 2026
Rated: 5 stars out of 5
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