SHOTGUN STORIES

Directed by Jeff Nichols

Starring: Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs

Produced by David Gordon Green, Lisa Muskat and Jeff Nichols

USA 2007, 92 minutes, Color, 35mm Cinemascope

"A point-blank buckshot blast of American rage, played with the disarmingly placid inevitability of Greek tragedy. Thesping is pitch-perfect."
--Eddie Cockrell, Variety

"Marvellously expressive." --Patrick McGavin, Screendaily

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

Son Hayes never speaks of the scars on his back. The men he works with take bets on how he got them. His brothers, Boy and Kid Hayes, don't discuss it. His past, just like these scars, is never far behind him. This stands true for the memory of his father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman who blames them for the life she's been left with and the man she could not keep. Their father managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a Christian, and fathered four new sons. All of whom received proper names.

At the start of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. Following a dispute at their father's funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and their half brothers. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. But 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.