The Vow (Seasons 1–2)

The Vow (2020) is an HBO documentary series you can watch online on iFILM — a multi-year portrait of NXIVM, the self-help company that became a federal sex-trafficking case.

NXIVM recruited through personal development workshops promising career breakthroughs and financial independence. What members found inside was a hierarchy built on silence, branding and sexual coercion, with founder Keith Raniere at the centre. The series follows participants like Mark Vicente and Sarah Edmondson from true believers to witnesses for the prosecution, covering the years before and during the federal investigation that brought the organization down.

Directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer filmed over several years with extraordinary access — real footage from inside the group, not dramatised reconstruction. The result reads less like a conventional exposé and more like a study in how intelligent, capable people get slowly locked into a system they cannot see clearly until they are out. Stream The Vow (2020) online on iFILM.