‘Seeds’ review: Deep roots, shallow yield | Sundance 2025

Directed by Brittany Shyne, Seeds is a textured documentary about Black southern farmers that struggles to grow beyond its uneven soil.

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Seeds unfolds like a poem etched into the land, its black-and-white cinematography lending a timeless quality to the lives of Black generational farmers in rural Georgia. Director Brittany Shyne captures the beauty and monotony of their days with a lyrical rhythm: cotton fields stretch endlessly, cattle roam under wide-open skies, and machinery groans and sputters like an aging workhorse. These scenes, interspersed with moments of intimacy—a grandmother fishing candy from her purse, neighbors chatting through car windows—evoke the deep, intertwined relationships between people, land, and legacy. It’s an evocative portrait of a vanishing way of life, brimming with texture and quiet poignancy.

But much like farming itself, Seeds is a slow and arduous process. While the film’s meditative pace mirrors the deliberate tempo of rural life, it too often leaves viewers adrift, with no dynamic framing device to tether the narrative. Shyne sows her film with poetic imagery and warmth, but the harvest feels thin, as if the deeper story remains buried beneath the surface. We see the struggles—accessing funding, battling systemic inequities, and facing the encroaching threat of land loss—but the film doesn’t fully connect the audience to the people living these challenges. The result is a documentary that respects its subjects but struggles to cultivate the emotional engagement needed to truly resonate.

Where Seeds blossoms is in its attention to detail. Shyne lingers on moments that might seem mundane—fixing a tractor, herding cattle—but these vignettes underscore the fragility and perseverance required to maintain a farming legacy. The black-and-white imagery is a deliberate choice, stripping away distractions and focusing the viewer on the stark contrasts of life on the land. Yet, the very stillness that makes these moments beautiful also makes the film feel static, as if it’s locked in place without a clear progression or resolution. It’s a cinematic portrait that captures the essence of farming life but stops short of delivering a fully realized commentary.

One of the film’s most poignant elements is its exploration of land as both a source of identity and a symbol of systemic injustice. A sobering statistic—Black farmers owned 16 million acres of land in 1910, but today that number has dwindled to a fraction—hovers over the film like a storm cloud. Through the interwoven stories of three families, Shyne lays bare the cycles of inequity that continue to erode these communities. There are moments of hope, particularly with younger generations returning to farming, but they’re fleeting, like seeds scattered on rocky soil.

And yet, there’s undeniable beauty in the fragments Shyne captures. The tenderness between family members, the quiet joy of working the land despite its challenges, and the resilience of those who refuse to let their roots be severed are all profoundly moving. These moments suggest what Seeds could have been if it had found a stronger narrative anchor. As it stands, the film feels more like a collection of compelling snapshots than a cohesive story, its poetic ambition undermined by its structural weaknesses.

Seeds is a respectable, deeply felt work, but it risks being too much of a meandering mood piece for broader audiences. It’s a film that wants to honor its subjects, and in many ways, it does, but like a field left untended, it struggles to fully yield its potential. For those with the patience to sit with its slow, contemplative approach, Seeds offers glimpses of grace and humanity. But for many, the film may feel more like a missed opportunity. An earnest planting that never quite blooms.

Seeds had its world premiere at the Sundance 2025 Film Festival. Find more of our Sundance 2025 coverage here.