Every year a diverse group of 50 high schoolers embarks on an eight month long journey into the past. It begins in the local cemetery, each holding a name on a gravestone. Their challenge is to resurrect forgotten lives, local hidden histories that reflect their town's complex, resilient Southern heritage. For many, this class project will prove to be life-changing, an experience that transforms their futures.

There is the painfully shy teen who surprises all as she reveals unexpected gifts through this class. For her and the others featured, this project becomes truly life changing. “A Mississippi Story” captures these gifted teens as they actively re-author their relationship with their home. What begins as research evolves into scripts and dramatized re-enactments by years end. At each step, we see them grapple with hope and fears that climaxes in performances for the community in the same graveyard where it all started, in an acclaimed annual event called “Tales from the Crypt”.

Director Biography - Ed Robbins

Brooklyn based Award-Winning Filmmaker Ed Robbins was Director, Producer, Cinematographer and Editor on "A Mississippi Story", his first fully independent feature documentary. For more than 30 years Robbins has mostly Directed-Written long-form documentaries for television and shorts for leading media outlets. His long form films have been commissioned by BBC2, Channel4 UK, ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery, NatGeo, PBS, plus shorts for the NYTimes and TIME Magazine. He has filmed across the USA and often in overseas crisis zones, countries include Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan and Syria. His television documentaries have garnered BANFF Special Jury Award, BAFTA Nominee, GLAAD Award, an EMMY, Best Documentary Rome Festival and others. He is honored to have directed documentaries for Walter Cronkite, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Louis Theroux. The final episode of The Sopranos features his footage of being ambushed during the Iraq War in 2005 from his PBS film "Warriors". Robbins also taught documentary video at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for 12 years and in Shanghai, China with the Institute for Advanced Research. He was a key consultant, writer, and featured in Ken Kobre's acclaimed 2024 "Video Journalism" Textbook.

Director Statement

"A Mississippi Story", my first fully independent feature doc, is one I am submitting in my 76th year as a labor of love. On first coming upon this remarkable school class in Columbus, Mississippi and their unique history project, I fell in love with the students. And I was awed by the dedication of their history teacher Chuck Yarborough. As the idea of doing a film first rose up, I was struck by how in these times when portions of our history are being actively supressed or erased, these students of the deep South are tasked to pursue hidden histories in such a powerful way. Each student must uncover a hidden local history starting with just a name from a grave. Each found story then becomes dramatized at years end through enactments by a select chosen few, performed to the community. Their passion is transcendent to see. For some the journey through this 8 month class became personally and movingly transformative.

I celebrate this unique program, I celebrate these gifted students who in this film overturn many negative cliches about Mississippi. And I share my own surprise at the unexpected diversity of these students: more than half are BIPOC, Asian and South Asian. Often the stories they chose and then told touched deeply on their own identities and family histories. I wanted to capture the whole process, and not in a way of overt advocacy against repressing our history. I wanted to create a story that like the student's own stories, could present these often uncomfortable truths in a compelling way to a wider range of people, including those of differing outlooks on these issues. ED ROBBINS Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor: "A MISSISSIPPI STORY " 1hr 18min