What is land? This is a question posed in multiple recent documentaries. Filmmakers from all over the world are reflecting on global concepts such as handwork, blue-collar societies, manual labor, and crafts. In a world digitally controlled, consumed, and monitored, there doesn’t seem to be a need or a demand for people working with their hands, whether to plant, harvest, or sell crops. It’s a tragedy, especially for people who know no other profession but what they do with their hands, and many directors and cameraholders chose to film the aftermath of this volatile post-digital economy.
A few minutes into SEEDS, an intimate documentary about African American farmers in Georgia, it was no surprise to discover that Brittany Shyne is both the director and cinematographer on this film. It’s obvious that her aesthetic choices are braided into the skin of the narrative–not a hint of desynchronization–and Shyne’s command of her subjects is evident throughout the course of the runtime.
Sound plays an important part in SEEDS: the steady sound of tractors whirring, seeds colliding and cascading in granular rhythm, modestly air-conditioned apartments with humble appliances, the wind caressing the leaves, carrying with it the silence of farmers contemplating their ambiguous future, or the pulse of everyday life.
Shyne traps us in the details of the farmers. She uses extreme close-ups, drawing us into skin and hair, hats and glasses, jewelry and dresses. Her wide shots are majestic and awe-inspiring, of the Black farmers going on with their daily lives, or their farming processes. Instead of stating facts or creating the dream world of a fairytale like Tamara Kotevska’s The Tale of Silyan, Shyne meditates on the Black farmer’s existence in a dangerously shifting world.
Shyne’s detailed worldbuilding is both fascinating and authentic. Her structure is intricately built around details. A car ride becomes a life of its own, brimming with moving limbs and chewed candies. A tractor ploughing fields becomes a National Geographic episode on farming, sans the annoying commentary. Shyne immerses audiences in her world, letting the camera roll for as long as she can. One forgets the passage of time, becoming invested completely in the lives of those Black farmers in the South, even if this life sounds like an alien ship landing on our lives.
Shyne’s choice of black and white to film the farmers gives the film a cinema vérité style. It’s realism but shot through the lens of a romanticized Béla Tarr-esque (rest in peace to the late Hungarian director) stylized directing and storytelling. Takes are long, relentless, and conversations are shown as they are, with rare, surgical editing in between, not to mercifully make a moment shorter for the viewer but to emphasize the grim silence of rural decay.
As much as it is visually stunning, the documentary is empowered by its intergenerational heroes, real-life protagonists opening up in front of the camera like stage actors. One story unfolds after the other, and Shyne’s direction enables them to shift perspectives from personal to professional hardships and struggles. Her close-ups are elegant, and her camerawork is gorgeous when she finally allows full faces to dominate the screen. It’s the farmers’ faces and poignant expressions that tell the story of discrimination and government ignorance through a glance of sorrow toward the land, or fear that one can’t afford to buy glasses for worsening vision.
SEEDS doesn’t try to ask sophisticated questions that it can’t answer, nor does it search for a solution to an expanding global problem of manpower decay. It simply states the obvious and challenges us to think, at least for once, where the world is headed and whether we can do anything about it.
SEEDS will debut in theaters at the Film Forum in New York on January 16, 2026. The film will expand to additional markets in the following weeks. It is currently shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 2026 Academy Awards.
SEEDS doesn’t try to ask sophisticated questions that it can’t answer, nor does it search for a solution to an expanding global problem of manpower decay. It simply states the obvious and challenges us to think, at least for once, where the world is headed and whether we can do anything about it.
Jaylan Salah Salman is an Egyptian poet, translator, and film critic for InSession Film, Geek Vibes Nation, and Moviejawn. She has published two poetry collections and translated fourteen books for International Languages House publishing company. She began her first web series on YouTube, “The JayDays,” where she comments on films and other daily life antics. On her free days, she searches for recipes to cook while reviewing movies.
