Reel South

The only thing mightier than Lena Mae Perry’s electrifying voice is her faith. She’s spent the last 50 years sharing and honing both as the steadfast frontwoman of The Branchettes, a legendary North Carolina gospel group that has packed churches and lifted weary hearts throughout the South.

A Tennessee folklorist, a fifth-generation Carolina farmer, a Mississippi river guide, and a former professional football player journey through loss and healing in this poetic ode to the power of landscape. A film shot during the COVID-19 Pandemic, ‘Stay Here Awhile’ invites us to linger in the space we find at the end of things.

8 Days at Ware / Love Without Parole Suicides at a juvenile detention center in Louisiana raise troubling questions about the facility and the agencies tasked with overseeing it. Thirteen-year-old Solan Peterson had only been at Ware Youth Center for eight days when he took his life while in isolation. ‘8 Days at Ware’ examines Solan’s last days – exposing the system that failed him and a legacy of abuse going back decades. In a notorious Alabama prison, Michael falls deeply in love and matrimony follows. But when serving a life sentence, without parole, keeping his relationship alive proves too difficult. When Michael is miraculously released after 36 years, can he find a way to rehabilitate his marriage, too?

Ten by Ten After living in Asia for over a decade and longing for a taste of home, Jessica opens a Tennessee-style diner out of her home in Jeju, South Korea. But after appearing on one of the country’s most popular television programs, she and her husband Dongseop must adjust to the shock of newfound TV fame, the crowds of curious new customers it brings, and the growing uncertainty of a global pandemic. The Space Between You & Me A Korean-American filmmaker from Alabama explores the complexities of international adoption through the stories of her birth mother and another adoptee in New York. ‘The Space Between You and Me’ is an effort to reclaim a stolen identity while searching for belonging between the worlds of the Jewish South, the Korean-American diaspora, and a fraught legacy of Korean adoption programs.

Quilted Education Karen Hinton Robinson quilts the Black history lessons absent from the Texan curricula. Jared Dawson is the Church of Lavonia Elberton Jared Dawson embodies his drag persona, Lavonia Elberton, in Atlanta, Georgia. Wiley's Last Resort An ode to one man’s fight against strip mining the Appalachian mountains he loved dearly.

Growing up, Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe learned to be a fighter but never imagined having a chance to make history as the first openly elected transgender official in Texas. Unfolding amidst an onslaught of legal attacks against the trans community, ‘A Run for More’ immerses viewers in Frankie’s journey as she finds her voice, questions her relationship with the community, and tries to win an election. Directed by Ray Whitehouse