Peter Santenello, a YouTube filmmaker known for spending extended time with local communities, explains to Chris Williamson how he moved from service work and independent travel into documenting subcultures and marginalised places. He describes early trips through the Republic of Georgia and beyond, then says his filmmaking career began in Ukraine, where he lived for four years and filmed rural families under difficult conditions. He recounts later work in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and how the pandemic shifted his focus to the United States, where he began profiling communities ranging from Appalachia to Native nations.
Santenello discusses poverty and addiction in central Appalachia and Philadelphia’s Kensington, arguing that fentanyl and related drugs drive visible street collapse. He alleges a “homeless industrial complex”, suggesting contractors and NGOs profit from homelessness without resolving it. On Native communities, he claims Native Americans have the highest military enlistment per capita and contrasts very poor reservations with wealthy ones, including the Seminole; he also says a lawyer demanded removal of a video after it was posted.
On the US–Mexico border, Santenello claims crossings are currently minimal, while describing prior surges in Arizona and alleging cartel-facilitated routes and long asylum-court backlogs. He also describes corporate “company towns” such as Baghdad, Arizona, presenting them as unusually stable but tightly controlled economic ecosystems.
Santenello says he visited Baghdad, Arizona, which he describes as a company town owned by mining group Freeport-McMoRan. He claims wages are high and rents unusually low because the company owns the housing and local infrastructure, presenting it as an alternative model amid broader US cost-of-living pressures.
Read this moment →YouTuber Peter Santenello tells Chris Williamson that the US–Mexico border is currently quiet, claiming that illegal crossings have largely stopped. He frames it as a sharp change from the period when he was making multiple border videos in Texas and Arizona.
Read this moment →Santenello recounts filming with a tribal council contact from the Seminole Tribe in Florida, describing a tightly controlled visit. He says that after the video was published, a lawyer contacted him and demanded it be taken down, referencing a legal matter involving Wells Fargo; Santenello says his team did not contest the request.
Read this moment →Describing a past reporting trip to the Yuma sector, Santenello claims he encountered migrants from India using a route via Mexico, and alleges cartels facilitated their movement to gaps in border barriers. He says the migrants were instructed to call 911 once on the US side so they would be collected by US authorities for processing.
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