King Coal (2023)
Director: Elaine McMillion Sheldon Run Time: 80 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2023
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Sundance Film Festival
From Academy Award nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, King Coal (2023) is a lyrical tapestry of a place and people, a meditation on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, the myths it has created. While deeply situated in Central Appalachia, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, and imagination.
“personal, poetic, and spiritual… “King Coal” begins with the ashes and ends as a phoenix.”
—Katie Rife, Indiewire
Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, King Coal (2023) untangles the pain from the beauty, and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.
About the filmmaker:
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated, and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. A West Virginia native, she is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries – Heroin(e) (2017) and Recovery Boys (2018) – that explore America’s opioid crisis. She has been named a Creative Capital Awardee, Guggenheim Fellow, a USA Fellow by United States Artists, and one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” by Filmmaker Magazine. She worked with Academy Award winning producers Shane Boris and Diane Becker (2022’s Navalny) and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall (2022’s Aftersun) on her latest documentary, King Coal (2023), which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
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