Movies: Appalachia

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, ...

After a personal tragedy, Sarah joins her friends on a caving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains. But when a rockfall traps them deep underground, their adventure turns into a nightmare. As they search for a way out, the group discovers they are...

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...

In Appalachia during the Great Depression, a young woman bears her brother’s baby. Her brother leaves the nameless infant in the woods to die, but tells his sister that the newborn died of natural causes and had to be buried. The sister discovers thi...

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...

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...

A documentary that examines the cultural stereotype of the people of Appalachia and how that has affected America's relationship with its rural communities....

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....

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...

During World War I, African-Americans worked on the railroad near Corbin, Kentucky. When whites returned from the war, there was conflict. Whites sought their former jobs and positions in the community. In 1919, a race riot occurred. Whites put the A...

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...

A determined housewife goes head-to-head with a $1 billion mining company after its negligent operation ruins her town's water supply....

Meadow Bridge is a coming-of-age story that follows Darcy, a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in a small West Virginia town in the late 1990s. It's a story about growing up on the edge of poverty and possibility - about trying to reach out into the ...

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....

Set in West Virginia during the 2014 Elk River chemical spill, a first-generation college student clashes with her family while investigating a bizarre issue with their water supply....

Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, sing...

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....

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....

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...