An eclectic and edgy journey through the South of the United States after a Black man named James Byrd Jr. was gruesomely murdered by three white men. This is neither an anatomy of his murder nor the autopsy of James Byrd Jr., whose presence haunts the entire film, but rather an evocation of how this event fits into a landscape and climate both mentally and physically. Akermans lingering gaze unsettles the seemingly ordinary scenery, revealing the violent history that hides in the silence of the South.
“How does the southern silence become so heavy and so menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment evoke so intensely death, blood and the weight of history? How does the present call up the past? And how does this past, with a mere gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?”
Chantal Akerman
“Sud is not simply a film about the lynching and enslavement of black people in the United States. It’s about the violence of the world and the way history haunts landscapes to become a part of our gaze. By going beyond the categories of good and evil and allowing a space of dignity for each character, including those who speak the most horrible things, the film shakes us directly, questioning our own way of looking at the other and the whole of humanity.”
Claire Atherton
“Ultimately, invisibility becomes the most powerful strategy in a film that, from the outset, sets up a tension between what is and what isn't shown or said and which actively implicates the spectator in its summoning of the dead.”
Marion Schmid
