Arts Center in Jamestown to screen Shelly Julson disappearance documentary

The Arts Center in Jamestown will screen Call Me Shelly on Tuesday, Sept. 15, from 7 to 8 p.m., bringing a documentary about Michele “Shelly” Julson’s unsolved disappearance back into a North Dakota community conversation. Julson went missing from Bismarck on Aug. 2, 1994, and her case has remained open for more than three decades.

Dakota Spotlight says Call Me Shelly is based on Season 7 of its true crime podcast and was written by James Wolner and directed by Derek Fletcher. The film uses new interviews, archival materials and original reporting, and it comes from the same team behind The House on Sweet and Seventh, the Emmy Award-winning documentary that helped establish Dakota Spotlight’s film work beyond audio.

The Arts Center said in a Facebook post that the film explores Julson’s life, her 1994 disappearance and the lasting impact her absence has had on her loved ones and the community. That framing gives the Jamestown screening a local urgency that goes beyond a standard film night: it puts an unresolved North Dakota case, and the human cost of not knowing what happened, in front of viewers who may still remember how long Julson’s name has circulated in regional memory.

Dakota Spotlight says Call Me Shelly is slated for theaters in September 2026. A separate screening at Fargo Theatre is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, at 7 p.m. and will include a Q&A, with tickets listed at $19.28. For Jamestown audiences, the Arts Center showing will be the first local chance to see a film built from the podcast series and fresh reporting on a disappearance that began in Bismarck on a summer day in 1994 and still has no public resolution.