(San Francisco, CA, Monday, February 11, 2019) – RaMell Ross’s Academy Award-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, one of the year’s most critically acclaimed films, is a dreamy and intimate journey through the world of Hale County, Alabama, a richly detailed glimpse into life in America’s Black Belt.

In the history of documentary, Hale County is a mythical place.  While the current residents subsist with comparable economic hardship, the racial demographics of the region have shifted. The forgotten, isolated famous men in Hale County are now people of color. Largely disenfranchised, the African American population lives with unequal distribution of, and access to, resources.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening, allows the viewer an emotive impression of the historic South, trumpeting the beauty of life and the consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously offering a testament to dreaming despite the odds.

The film premieres on Independent Lens on Monday, February 11, 2019, from 10:00 to 11:30 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. The film has received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

RaMell Ross, Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Sound Recordist, and Editor, earned a BA in both English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in such outlets as The New York Times. He was part of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015, and a New Frontier Artist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab.

In 2016, he was a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, winner of an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant and a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow. In early 2017, he was selected for Rhode Island Foundation’s Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Artist Fellowship. RaMell is currently on faculty at Brown University’s Visual Arts Department. Hale County This Morning, This Evening is his first feature documentary. He met Quincy while teaching a GED program in Greensboro, Alabama, and Daniel while coaching basketball at the local high school.

For more information, visit pbs.org/independentlens.