Movies: Appalachia

After a tragic accident, six friends reunite for a caving expedition. Their adventure soon goes horribly wrong when a collapse traps them deep underground and they find themselves pursued by bloodthirsty creatures. As their friendships deteriorate, t...

In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, ...

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the...

A father survives a plane crash in rural Appalachia, but becomes suspicious of the elderly couple who take him in to nurse him back to health with the ancient remedies....

After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends....

The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community...

In a rural Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past....

A Pentecostal pastor, Lemuel Childs, and his believers handle venomous snakes to prove themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter, Mara holds a secret that threatens to tear the church apart: her romantic past with a nonbeliever, Augie. As Mara’s weddi...

A troubled woman seeks out the child she gave up for adoption; a gay motel owner takes in a handsome drifter; and the wife of a preacher frets that a gay couple has moved in across the street. All of their lives will intersect as Loggerheads subtly d...

An intimate, arresting portrait of the cursed Appalachian mining town of Ivanhoe, Virginia. The film captures the town as it prepares for the annual Jubilee, a wild 4th of July celebration where families and neighbors let loose and triumph over daily...

“No Such Right” is a snapshot of a region in crisis. In the aftermath of the stunning Dobbs v Jackson decision, doctors, lawyers, activists, and young people across Appalachia had to come to terms with what the future of their region and their rights...

Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this d...

A roaming hillbilly, on a quest to defy the Devil, encounters several supernatural characters and does battle with his silver-stringed guitar....

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia....

Deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, where every man owns a gun and a moonshine still, abides living legend Jesco White, "the dancing outlaw". As a boy Jesco was in and out of reform school and the insane asylum. To keep h...

This documentary follows the lives of the Bowling family as they fight to survive in dirt-poor Appalachia. Matriarch Iree has given birth to 13 children, but only two have left to seek better lives in Ohio while the rest have married and started thei...

Revisit photographs created by Kentucky school children in the 1970s and the place where their photos were made. Photographer and artist Wendy Ewald, who guided the students in making their visionary photographs, returns to Kentucky and learns how th...

A film about America’s first serial killers. These brothers terrorized Kentucky and went across the state on a killing spree. The film is loosely based on the true story of the brothers. Filmed in historically accurate locations....

Whiskey-making, one of the oldest traditions in the mountains, has been illegal since the end of the 18th century. Tradition is a portrait of Appalachian moonshiner Logan Adams, who began practicing his trade as a boy because “back then there wasn’t ...

Set in the North Carolina Appalachians, Sprout Wings and Fly honors the fiddle playing of 82-year-old Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. Tommy was quirky, gregarious and generous, and this film shows him at his best, in fine fiddling form....