22nd Calgary Underground Film Festival

April 17-27, 2025

13th CUFF.Docs Documentary Film Festival

November 19-23, 2025

King Coal

United States, 2023: 80 minutes: Alberta Premiere
Archives 2023
KingCoalStill-1
Globe Cinema
Sun, Nov 26 11:30 AM Buy

description

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.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking in a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life. While deeply situated in the communities under the reign of King Coal, where McMillion Sheldon has lived and worked her entire life, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, and imagination. Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, KING COAL untangles the pain from the beauty, and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sundance Film Festival 2023
Seattle International Film Festival 2023
Cleveland International Film Festival 2023
RiverRun International Film Festival 2023

DIRECTOR'S BIO
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated, and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. Sheldon is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries - HEROIN(E) and RECOVERY BOYS- that explore America's opioid crisis. She has been named a Creative Capital Awardee, Guggenheim Fellow, a USA Fellow by United States Artists, and one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film,” by Filmmaker Magazine. Her latest film, KING COAL, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. McMillion Sheldon was raised in West Virginia and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

press for King Coal

"Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s poetic documentary KING COAL is a lyrical tribute to the place she calls home."
- RogerEbert.com
"Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of [West Virginia], 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."
- Wall Street Journal

details

Coming of Age / Documentary / Woman Director

English
80 minutes

credits

Director
Elaine McMillion Sheldon

Executive Producers
Katherine Drexler
Heather Baldry

Producers
Peggy Drexler
Elaine McMillion Sheldon
Shane Boris
Diane Becker

Cast
Lanie Bayless Marsh
Gabrielle “Gabby” Wilson

Cinematographer
Curren Sheldon

Composer
Bobak Lotfipour

Official website:
https://www.kingcoalfilm.com/

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/kingcoalfilm/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/elainemcmillionsheldon

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/elainemsheldon

community

awards