Mississippi Damned

Three poor Black children in rural Mississippi are left to carry the consequences of a family cycle of violence, addiction and abuse. The film does not present that cycle as a fate; it shows at which point it might be broken and why it is not. The account follows the paths of the three children separately and makes none of them an example of another. The adults are given as people who once grew up in the same house and are not drawn in a single dimension. The film does not turn poverty into a spectacle and does not close with a promise of deliverance. The events run in two separate periods, which is how what repeats becomes visible. Tessa Thompson appears in Tina Mabry’s hundred and twenty minute American film, completed in 2009.