‘Seeds’: Sundance Review

Dir: Brittany Shyne. US. 2025. 123mins

Seeds is a sweet, meditative elegy for a way of life that is fast disappearing. Brittany Shyne’s immersive black and white documentary captures the lyrical everyday in the lives of Black generational farmers in the American South. The focus on family, tradition and legacy becomes all the more poignant as we start to understand how fragile this existence now is. The intimacy and empathy in the film invite comparisons with RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2021), and Shyne’s feature debut, which premieres in Sundance’s US Documentary competition, should establish her as a distinguished chronicler of the African American experience.

The film’s heart lies in its more intimate observations

Seeds begins as family members gather to attend a funeral. An elderly woman snuggles next to her granddaughter, answering her questions about heaven and offering comforting candy from her purse. The sense of ending and afterlife haunts a film that explores the family stories of 89 year-old Carlie Williams, who has farmed for 70 years, and the younger Willie Head Jr.

Shyne does provide some context along the way, noting that black farmers owned 16 million acres of American land in 1910 and today own under 1.5 million acres. Head Jr’s story in particular illustrates the challenges facing contemporary farming, from discriminatory government payments that favour white farmers to the fading viability of working the land at this level. Head owns 72 acres, and lives off his social security cheque of $900 a month. How can he hope to pass the farm on to the grandchildren and great grandchildren he clearly adores, who have a connection to the land on which they play.

The film doesn’t prioritise narrative but instead focuses on generating understanding. Shyne demands patience from the viewer as she slows the pace to reflect the rhythms of this life and, serving as the film’s cinematographer, extends a gentle invitation into this world. Her camera focuses on a cotton harvest that clouds the air with dust and fibres. Watermelons are collected by a daisy chain of workers. Pecans are harvested for $1.30 a kilo, a horseshoe is replaced, cobs of corn are thrown to the cattle for feed. Everything happens in its own good time.

The film’s heart lies in its more intimate observations, as an elderly woman washes her hair, a washing line is filled with work jeans, a beautiful tree stretches to the heavens and Carlie goes to buy glasses that he can ill afford. There is a sense of community here, and the feeling that there is always time to chew the fat and reflect on life. But what we see is mostly a community of the elderly. We glimpse rusted vehicles and abandoned implements, family photos that speak to more certain times. Younger generations left to find work and wealth in the cities of the north. If they were to return, there is no longer land here that they could afford.

Seeds is steeped in a wistful nostalgia that occasionally brushes up against a harsh modern reality, especially when Head Jr. ventures to Washington to support a Justice For Black Farmers protest held in front of the White House. Towards the end of the film, Head Jr. lists his needs as being able to live off the land, have his family close by and pass on the farm to the next generation. Seeds celebrates the value of these simple things, whilst also acknowledging how precarious a dream that has become