King Coal

Beautiful shots of the surrounding nature but the subject and the angle they chose to reflect on it is wildly uninteresting

Beautiful shots of the surrounding nature but the subject and the angle they chose to reflect on it is wildly uninteresting

2023 Sundance Film Festival — Screening No. 2

“I think about the paradox of pride and remorse … I learned that you can be proud of your life, and want better for them that come after you.”

This blew me away. West Virginia is my home, and it’s not often we get to see depictions of our state like this.

Even by making some of the choices she makes late in the film, Sheldon is showing us that this can be more than just a conventional story about the pain and beauty in the legacy of coal in Appalachia, and that there is so much more to the people who live here than we normally see depicted in the stories told about us. This place knows how to dream.

It grapples with that pull we feel far too often growing up in West Virginia of loving this place and the people, but also accepting and understanding the truth about the current state of things and desperately wanting to see better days on the horizon.

Have loved Sheldon’s work since her interactive documentary HOLLOW almost a decade ago and it’s always refreshing to see her tell stories like this and do it in such original and authentic ways.

UPDATED: 2023, ranked

2023 Sundance Film Festival — Screening No. 2

“I think about the paradox of pride and remorse … I learned that you can be proud of your life, and want better for them that come after you.”

This blew me away. West Virginia is my home, and it’s not often we get to see depictions of our state like this.

Even by making some of the choices she makes late in the film, Sheldon is showing us that this can be more than just a conventional story about the pain and beauty in the legacy of coal in Appalachia, and that there is so much more to the people who live here than we normally see depicted in the stories told about us. This place knows how to dream.

It grapples with that pull we feel far too often growing up in West Virginia of loving this place and the people, but also accepting and understanding the truth about the current state of things and desperately wanting to see better days on the horizon.

Have loved Sheldon’s work since her interactive documentary HOLLOW almost a decade ago and it’s always refreshing to see her tell stories like this and do it in such original and authentic ways.

UPDATED: 2023, ranked

Sundance #1 - As someone who grew up in West Virginia and is the grandson of a coal miner, I found it haunting how accurately Elaine Mcmillion Sheldon portrayed the tension of the Appalachian region. Instead of honing in on the political state of coal, King Coal, rightly focuses on the people of the region. Coal brought everyone together, but what becomes of the people when coal is no more? The film asks more questions than gives answers about what the path forward may be for these people, but it is in those questions and in the stories that you find a compassion for what this region has experienced and is experiencing.

Read my full review here

Sundance #1 - As someone who grew up in West Virginia and is the grandson of a coal miner, I found it haunting how accurately Elaine Mcmillion Sheldon portrayed the tension of the Appalachian region. Instead of honing in on the political state of coal, King Coal, rightly focuses on the people of the region. Coal brought everyone together, but what becomes of the people when coal is no more? The film asks more questions than gives answers about what the path forward may be for these people, but it is in those questions and in the stories that you find a compassion for what this region has experienced and is experiencing.

Read my full review here