Willie Head Jr. appears in Seeds by Brittany Shyne, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Brittany Shyne.

Seeds Review: Harvesting Systemic Inequality and Sowing Poetic New Roots

Sundance 2025

/
7 mins read

Seeds
(USA, 123 min.)
Dir. Brittany Shyne
Program: U.S. Documentary Competition

 

One of the striking things about Brittany Shyne’s wonderful directorial debut Seeds is that it starts with a funeral. The audience observes a Black family travelling on their way to the church and eventually the cemetery. Along the way, Shyne’s camera focuses on a grandmother as she shares a snack with her young granddaughter who  recounts all the relatives who have passed on to heaven.

The tender moment perfectly encapsulates the sense of generational bonding that permeates throughout Shyne’s documentary. Many of the Black farmers at the centre of the film are continuing a legacy passed down to them and understand the importance of having land to leave to future generations. A patch of earth where their families can connect with nature and learn the rich history and traditions baked into the soil.

Unfortunately, for many Black agriculturalists in the American South, this sense of heritage and legacy are being forcefully eroded by systemic racism. Taking a meditative approach, Seeds offers a sobering exploration of generational farmers who find themselves holding onto their livelihood and land by the thinnest of threads.

In the early 1900s Black farmers owned 16 million acres of land, but today that number has been reduced to 1 million.  One of the major reasons for this decline is that the farmers are systematically being pushed off their land. For Georgia-based farmers like Willie Head Jr. and Carlie Williams, the lack of funding has made it increasingly difficult to continue their respective family’s farming traditions.

Due to longstanding systemic racism, Black farmers are simply not receiving government funding at the same rate as their white counterparts. Despite the Biden Administration signing The American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, which was an economic stimulus bill to help industries impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, many Black farmers still have not received their money. Unlike the white farmers who got the stimulus, and can therefore buy the necessary seeds and equipment to restore their businesses, many Black farmers have been made to wait an additional 18 months.

Complicating matters is the fact that banks and the USDA Farm Service Agency routinely turn down their loan requests. Without any other option to turn to, the farmers have no choice but to rely on the Department of Agriculture, the ones whose delays forced them to seek loans in the first place. It is a vicious cycle that becomes even more insidious when one considers that the banks will take over land, and most likely sell it to white farmers if the Black farmers cannot pay their bills.

The impact of the cash strapped nature of their existence is evident in every aspect of the lives that Shyne’s film documents. Living off his social security cheque of a measly $900 per month, Head Jr. has resorted to storing his crop seeds in a freezer to preserve them as long as possible. Dealing with ailing loved ones himself, 89-year-old Williams can barely afford to buy the new pair of glasses he desperately needs.

Despite the numerous hardships, and relentless activism for Black farmer’s rights on Head Jr.’s part, Seeds finds hope and strength in the farmers themselves. Shyne’s documentary presents a beautifully poetic look at a community full of love and perseverance in the face of adversity. Quietly observing the daily routines of the farmers, the various crops they grow, and interactions within the community, one truly feels the weight of history and the strength fellowship. They are the type of people who will not hesitate to drop off produce for the elderly neighbour down the way who recently had a stroke.

Shooting in black-and-white, Shyne also serves as the film’s cinematographer, and the monochrome palette adds a gorgeous texture to the film. Shyne strips the people and landscape down to their essence. Adding to the new wave of Black documentarian filmmakers who find poetic beauty in even the mundane aspects of Black life—think RaMell Ross’ Hale County, This Morning, This Evening (2018) or Garrett Bradley’s Time (2020)—Shyne manages to make simple shots, such as Head Jr.’s great granddaughter Alani sitting in the back of his moving truck or a leaves on a branch vibrating due to a nearby tractor, mesmerizing to observe.

In capturing the joyful, stressful, and the ordinary aspects of life, Shyne’s camera brings extra significance to the land itself and the Black farmers’ place in it. While one person in the film notes that it is farmers who ultimately keep America feed, the audience cannot help but reflect the historical journey of Black farmers when the director’s lens lingers on the machinery used to pick massive stacks of cotton. It makes their frustration with the lack of government support, especially by elected officials who seem powerless to free them of the chains of their oppressive state, even more palpable.

A captivating meditation on the challenges of maintaining a legacy, Seeds plants its poetic roots in the unwavering perseverance of Black farmers and the generational bonds that fuel them.

Seeds premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Courtney Small is a Rotten Tomatoes approved film critic and co-host of the radio show Frameline. He has contributed to That Shelf, Leonard Maltin, Cinema Axis, In the Seats, and Black Girl Nerds. He is the host of the Changing Reels podcast and is a member of the Toronto Film Critics Association, Online Film Critics Society and the African American Film Critics Association.

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