Lost Bayou

In his first feature film, director Brian C. Miller Richard delves with delight into unknown corners of Louisiana that have been completely forgotten by the modern world and, like many artists before him who were fascinated by Southern Gothic, gets lost somewhere between reality and hot, sticky mysticism. Just like his protagonist, Gal (Teri Wyble, who also hails from the area), a young woman struggling with addiction, who lost control of her life long ago—she’s even a day late for her own child’s birthday. When she receives a phone call from her estranged father, a healer, who is still living somewhere in the swamps and, as he claims, is worried about the condition of her sick mother, she decides to go back home, since her mother had died a few years earlier. To the hypnotic music of the Grammy-winning Lost Bayou Ramblers, the director takes a look at every shameful corner of the American South—which is still very reluctant to share its secrets.