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Sundance 2023 Film to Keep on Your Radar: KING COAL

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Directed and Produced By: Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Heroin(e))

Produced By: Shane Boris, Diane Becker, Peggy Drexler

Co-Produced By: Curren Sheldon, Molly Born

Executive Producers: Katherine Drexler, Heather A. Baldry

U.S. Sales: Eric Sloss at Cinetic Media

TRT: 80 minutes

Central Appalachia is a place of mountains and myth. Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Heroin(e), 2018 Academy Award® nominee for Best Documentary Short Subject, 2018 News and Documentary Emmy Award® winner for Outstanding Short Documentary) knows this well, calling those mountains home. Coal has had a profound influence on this community’s identity, but Sheldon dares to consider what future stories might look like out of the shadow of coal, now that relationships to coal are changing. She takes us on an alluring cinematic journey through Appalachia's past, present, and future.

Sheldon’s distinct vision remixes present-day moments of life in a coal-mining town with archival footage and atmospheric invocations of the land to alchemize something new — a rare, nuanced depiction of this community. A young girl learning the story of coal anchors the journey while Sheldon’s poetic voiceover guides us through the experience. An expressive score differentiates the reality of coal from a more imaginative world. The hybrid approach allows Sheldon to explore the act of storytelling and is a magical reclamation of the power of stories to shape how a region sees itself. The end of one story welcomes the beginning of another.

In the United States and the world at large, our feelings toward fossil fuels are often highly politicized and lack nuance. The conversation around this divisive subject needs to be explored from multiple sides and humanized. When it comes to the environment, we need to move forward, there is no more time to wait. But how do we do so while bringing along those who are hesitant... those who have a generational pull to resist this change? 

For screening times and more info about the film and filmmaker, please visit the Official Sundance Page.

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