“Silver Dollar Road” will be premiering on Amazon Prime, which is produced by Amazon Studios.
From Academy-Award Nominee Raoul Peck, Silver Road follows the story of the Reels family as told by the matriarch Mamie Reels Ellison and her niece Kim Renee Duhon.
“We are in format more and more. Some companies are using algorithms for documentaries,” says Peck. “The whole filming is being transformed almost as we speak. I almost think it’s too late for the kind of documentary I make.”
Two fierce women defend their rights and fighting to protect their ancestor’s land and their brothers and uncles Melvin and Licurtis, who were incarcerated for eight years for refusing to leave their homes. They were the longest serving inmates for civil contempt in the country.
A black family in North Carolina was harassed for decades by land developers attempting to take their waterfront property.
This documentary is based on the 2019 ProPublica article, highlights the ways the legal system is exploited to limit land ownership in the Black community and further contributes to the racial wealth gap.
“I wanted to put the family at the center and not the drama. The drama happened to a family that could be yours, it could be mine,” says Peck. “The usual format would have asked me to let the audience know from the get-go that they’re victims. Then you lose. There’s no way you can recover.”
The documentary premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
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