Hale County This Morning, This Evening

“I already had my troubles for today, so I can’t worry about tomorrow,” states Daniel, one of the protagonists in award-winning photographer RaMell Ross’s inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people. Set in an African American community in rural Alabama where the director moved to coach basketball in 2009, the film captures small, but nevertheless precious, moments in black lives—church services, a toddler running circles, an eclipse—with rapturous attention.

“It’s not every day that you witness a new cinematic language being born, but watching RaMell Ross’s evocatively titled documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening qualifies. The director, a photographer and teacher who was coaching basketball in the middle of the Black Belt region of the American South, knew the subjects of his documentary for several years before deciding to create a film around them. The finished work, a half decade in the making, is informed by his deep familiarity with its characters, which might be one reason why he has the confidence to abandon traditional narrative structures and strike out on his own lyrical path.”—Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice

“Ross has a preternatural talent for capturing moments, souls, and unorthodox time-lapses. Every shot seems to maximize the cinematographic potential of the scene through dexterous camerawork, while excellent sound collaging matches the scattered but chain-linked visuals. This is a man overflowing with vision.”—Theo Schear, Film Threat