FILM & VIDEO

Home > FILM & VIDEO > Best of the Fests: Shotgun Stories

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets
• Add to My Favorites

Best of the Fests: Shotgun Stories

Presented by Austin Film Society at Alamo Drafthouse Village

May 11, 2011

Add Review/Comment
Comment on Facebook

Director Jeff Nichols in attendance for Q&A - 35mm print

Playing with the short film KNIFE, by Austin Film Society Member James Johnston.

Jeff's latest feature film, TAKE SHELTER, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, played at Sundance and was selected to play at Cannes! Come celebrate with Jeff before he leaves the next day for France.

SHOTGUN STORIES tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

Son Hayes (Michael Shannon) never speaks of the scars on his back. The shotgun pellets left under his skin make for a sporadic pattern of blue-black dots. The men he works with take bets on how he got them. His brothers, Boy and Kid Hayes, don't discuss it. His past, just like these scars, is never far behind him.

This stands true for the memory of his father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid, when they were young. Their last impressions were of a violent drunk who never hesitated to put his own needs ahead of his family. The brothers were left to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman, who to this day blames her children for the life she's been left with and the man she could not keep.

Their father, having left the memory of his children as completely as he left their home, managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a devout Christian, married a wonderful woman, and fathered four new sons, all of whom received proper names. His life became a model that most would aspire to, a man successful in business, community and family. His only true failing was the sons he turned his back on.

At the beginning of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. The three brothers' lives progress and their futures play out, but their past inevitably comes to claim them. Following a dispute at their father's funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and the new young men their father has raised. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. However now, it is a thing that will rise up to overtake them all. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

Cast: Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs, Natalie Canerday, Glenda Pannell, Lynnsee Provence