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New Directions Summer Film Series...

Shotgun Stories
(2007, 92 mins)
Director: Jeff Nichols, U.S.

Sunday, July 16, 2009 – 7pm
Blanton Museum of Art
200 E. MLK Blvd.

Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their 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 who 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 being 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.