In this edition of the Family Enterprise Entertainment (FEE) column, we spotlight Seeds (2025), Brittany Shyne's documentary debut on Black generational farmers in the American South. The film won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was later shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film, alongside a nomination for the Truer Than Fiction Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Shot in black and white, Seeds follows farms that have remained in the same family for generations, including the Kentavia-Williams farm in Thomasville, Georgia, which has been operated by the same family for 142 years. A century ago, Black farmers owned over 16 million acres across the South. Today only a fraction of that land remains in the hands of descendants, and the families in the film are among those still working to hold onto what has been passed down to them.
This is where Seeds speaks directly to the questions raised in "What Does Time Do? What Anniversaries Are For." These are, in effect, centennial family enterprises. Their land carries the same tension between the two clocks discussed in that article: the daily, seasonal decisions of planting and harvest, set against the longer arc of what a hundred-plus years of ownership is meant to mean. The film does not offer a tidy resolution. It simply shows farmers choosing, season after season, to keep going, which is its own answer to the question of what a legacy is for.
Seeds is currently screening in select theaters and is set to air on PBS's Independent Lens this fall.
Themes: Land & Legacy, Intergenerational Stewardship, Centennial Enterprise, Historical Identity, Resilience
