When the trailer for Natchez first played at FilmScene, showing women in Gone with the Wind-esque gowns and men in gray Civil War fatigues smiling for photos in a former Mississippi plantation home, my partner leaned over and said, “I’ve been there. We had a family reunion there.” Even before watching the film, its themes of historical whitewashing and heritage tourism were already front of mind. How far away is the past, really? And how foggy should we let our collective memory get?
Directed by Suzannah Herbert and produced by Darcy McKinnon, who attended FilmScene’s Vino Vérité sold-out screening of Natchez in person on Sunday, May 17, the documentary is currently enjoying its 15th week in theaters. It took home the Best Documentary Feature award at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
Set in a Mississippi town renowned for its antebellum era architecture, the film follows Natchez’s tourism industry, which economically buoys the area and those who participate in it. Seasonal “Pilgrimage” tours, predominantly managed by garden clubs, give visitors the opportunity to indulge in historical Southern mega-wealth, replete with polished china, extravagant dining rooms and delicious white wine. But the film quickly scratches the surface of this intergenerational nostalgia to recall that systems of chattel slavery and white supremacy undergirding it all — and their potent legacy.
Natchez follows Southerners committed to preserving history and questioning how they wrestle with all of history, even the parts that don’t look good dressed up in a hoop skirt.
Cinematographer Noah Collier excels in depicting what producer McKinnon called “the beauty and the terror” of Natchez, as most scenes feature an eerie vignette, gesturing towards how much of popular tourism relies on obscuring the darker parts of history. For example, all guides use the term “servant,” rather than “slave,” to describe an enslaved worker in the household.
In a post-screening Q&A, McKinnon shared that most of the film was shot on a tripod so that Collier could capture a majority of each home in the frame and emphasize “the structure of place” and its role in curating a history. Despite being set in the South, the film looks and feels cold, denying the audience any feelings of comfort or warmth in this polished image of the past.
While highlighting the uncanny grandeur of these plantation homes is paramount to Natchez’s commentary, so is its featured cast, particularly one tour guide, Tracy “Rev” Collins, who operates outside of the Pilgrimage Garden Club organization and instead offers views of “the real Mississippi” through Rev’s Country Tours. Collins is really the core of the film, his energetic and insightful tours providing the tonal and narrative anchor for Herbert’s observational documentary.
Collins does not rely on the ornamental halls to regurgitate a “Master Narrative,” which Toni Morrison referred to as “white male life. The Master Narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else: The Master Fiction…history.”
Instead, Collins takes his guests to the very land slaves toiled and died over, driving them to the Forks of the Road slave market and having frank and honest conversations about not only the horrors of slavery, but the enduring institutional consequences of it.
“There are some very boring house tours in Mississippi,” joked McKinnon in the Q&A when sharing the charisma Collins and other major players in the film have. “[Rev’s] tours have the turn the way our film does. He was the key to unlocking the film.”
The turn McKinnon speaks of, in which Natchez skillfully unravels the veneer of hospitality within this popular city, is a profound one. The film’s editing challenges the audience, catching them in their own tendencies to trust what they hear and see, which leads to a reveal you might see coming, but will likely shock you nonetheless.
One of the richest men in Natchez during the 19th century was David Hunt, whose cotton production and possession of over 500 enslaved people had him dubbed “King David.” My partner is the sixth of his name, and the first, his namesake, married David Hunt’s daughter, Elizabeth, and was a Confederate Captain. David Hunt gifted the bride and groom the Black Creek Plantation, consisting of 99 slaves.
Such a reality is anything but cinematic. It is just a cold, hard truth that the past is not static, but a living, breathing reality we constantly interact with and must be accountable for.
FilmScene is showing two more screenings of Natchez on Tuesday and Wednesday. You can also find the full film free on YouTube, as it is a PBS-supported production.
