King Coal

Name: King Coal
Genre: Documentary
Released: August 11, 2023
Duration: 80 min
Rating: 80

2023

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Generally favorable reviews based on 7 Critic Reviews

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King Coal

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Movie Details & Credits

| Release Date: August 11, 2023 | Not Rated

Summary: A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created.

Director: Elaine McMillion Sheldon

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 80 min

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Critic Reviews

The Playlist Marya E. Gates

Sheldon is a coal miner’s daughter, and her brother is a fourth-generation miner. Coal is intrinsic to her family. This is the story of her people, a celebration of their traditions, a condemnation of an economic system that failed them, and an elegy for a waning way of life. Read full review

Robert Daniels

Aug 14, 2023

In this melancholic, thoughtfully attuned cinematic essay, no mountain is more important than the people who are still confined to the claustrophobic tunnels of the past. Read full review

The Film Stage John Fink

It offers no easy answers while spinning an evocative web of ideas, treating the mineral and all that follows as a religion complete with sacrifices. Read full review

Kyle Smith

Aug 10, 2023

Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of the state, has done a breathtakingly expressive job of capturing the strangeness, the beauty and the devastation of her homeland in the poetic, entrancing documentary King Coal. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Monica Castillo

Aug 11, 2023

Filmed in Central Appalachia—including the director's home state of West Virginia—King Coal moves beyond shallow impressions of the region with a real love for her neighbors and prodding questions about what it means to identify with an industry that has harmed and exploited generations of families. Read full review

IndieWire Katie Rife

King Coal goes deeper into the cultural roots of the opioid crisis, looking at a region both devastated and nurtured by “the King” and asking what a future without it might look like. Read full review

Jacob Oller

Aug 11, 2023

King Coal might not be an invigorating, fire-lighting work like Harlan County, USA, but it is still a startling piece of anthropology: An expression of a place and a people, and their local god, ruler and captor. Read full review

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