Canadian Premiere
Filmmaker and cinematographer Brittany Shyne captures nearly a century of Black farming life in Seeds, a quiet, luminous portrait of family, legacy, and land in the American South. Shot over the course of nine years and drawn from more than 400 hours of footage, the film follows three generations of Black farmers in Georgia and Mississippi, offering a rare look at the daily lives of these stewards of the land from cotton harvesting and cattle wrangling to kitchen table conversations. Through a patient, observant lens, Shyne reveals both the beauty and the burdens of staying rooted.
In 1910, Black farmers owned 16 million acres of land in the US — a holding that has significantly diminished over the past century. Seeds makes visible the enduring structural inequities that affect Black agricultural families, from limited access to credit and subsidies to the fragility of passing land down through generations. Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2025, this extraordinary debut meditates on inheritance, survival, and the quiet power of holding on.
Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary Competition, Sundance 2025
Media Partner
Belle Williams, Carlie Williams, Ben F. Burkett, Walter Williams, Margaret Williams, Lois Williams
USA
2025
English
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Leslie Fields-Cruz
Producer
Danielle Varga, Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Brittany Shyne
Cinematography
Brittany Shyne
Editor
Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Original Music
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Brittany Shyne
Shyne is an independent filmmaker based in Dayton, Ohio. Working in the narrative non-fiction form, her work seeks to depict the complexities of everyday life by examining themes such as personal histories, alienation, and cultural modernization. She was the recipient of the 2021 Artist Disruptor Award from the Center of Cultural Power, and has worked as a cinematographer on films such as The Debutantes (Tribeca 2024) and Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s Academy Award–winning film American Factory (2019). Seeds is her first feature-length documentary.
Filmography: Painted Lady (2013)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Streetwalker
Middle class and married, Elena (Miroslava Stern) has been seduced by an unscrupulous swindler, who turns out to be the pimp of Maria (Elda Peralta), a prostitute and Elena's estranged sister. But are they really so different under the skin?
Two Prosecutors
In the midst of Stalin’s purges, a naïve prosecutor sets out to investigate a prisoner’s innocence, unaware of the labyrinthine bureaucracy awaiting him. A Kafkaesque procedural thriller about the pursuit of justice in the face of corruption.
Image: © SBS Productions
Salón México
Cheated by her pimp, Mercedes recklessly steals his wallet and is only saved from a severe beating by the intervention of a kindly policeman. Hard-hitting social realism sits beside patriotic sentimentality and multiple red hot dance sequences.
The Kneeling Goddess
In which wealthy industrialist Arturo de Cordova purchases the titular nude sculpture of his lover (María Félix) as an anniversary gift for his innocent, adoring wife. Soon enough the wife is dead, though untangling just how and why is part of the fun.