Mississippi, a "rich source of storytelling," is a good place to make movies, filmmakers decide at the Film Mississippi Summit 2026

  

(A panel discussion at the Film Mississippi Summit 2026)

Even as a young movie lover growing up in North Carolina, I always felt a certain thrill when I saw that a film was set in Mississippi. Whether it was a Tennessee Williams story like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958 or a William Faulkner tale like The Reivers in 1969 or the 1972 film Tomorrow, I knew I was in for a special thrill.

 

Why? Because Mississippi was mysterious. Full of problems like poverty, backwardness, and racism? Of course, but those issues meant conflict, and as Mississippi-based film producer Clark Richey said at the recent Film Mississippi Summit in Jackson, all good stories need conflict.

 

“Why Mississippi?” he told an audience of 100 or more filmmakers and film lovers. “It’s rural and poor and (has) conflict. Lord knows Mississippi has had a lot of conflict.”

 

An organization that has as its primary mission “to foster the growth of the film industry in the state," Film Mississippi hosts the summit to serve as a gathering place for filmmakers to explore better ways not only to make films but also to market and distribute them.

 

Working in what is perennially the nation’s poorest state means dealing with a comparatively limited infrastructure of the cast and crews and financial resources needed to make movies. However, that infrastructure is growing, speakers said, and the state is simply a natural for movie making.

 

Mississippi “is such a rich source of storytelling,” producer and studio executive Sara Rea said. If Mississippians don’t tell their story, others will, she added, and the result often will be stories full of stereotypes and half-truths.

 

“Mississippi culturally is an asset, and we should use that,” added Nina Parikh, director of Film Mississippi.

 

What’s said about Mississippi could be said of the entire South, increasingly a region where filmmakers have turned as an alternative to Hollywood. “The South is the place of the future because of the struggles of its past,” said Emily Best, founder and C.E.O. of the world’s number 1 crowdfunding platform for storytellers, Seed&Spark.

 

“You can be anywhere now,” said Bethany Claypool, founder of Rennesoy Entertainment. “Hollywood isn’t Hollywood anymore. I live in Denver.”

 

(To the right, MSU film professor Marty Lang)
 

Mississippi State University film professor Marty Lang, author of The Self-Sustaining Filmmaker, challenged filmmakers in the audience to go beyond the act of making a film to seek collaborators and be entrepreneurial in building audiences and helping develop distribution channels.

 

Mississippi has been successful over the years in both developing local talent and attracting outside talents. Films made there include The Help (2011), O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), The Chamber (1996), Mississippi Masala (1991), and Mississippi Burning (1988).

 

I recall old friends from North Carolina visiting me and my family in Oxford, Mississippi, way back in the 1990s. One evening I took them to a noted catfish restaurant called Taylor Grocery for dinner. To get there meant a 10-mile drive down a dark country road surrounded on both sides by deep forests, the occasional trailer, and, under a full moon, lots of shadows and shadows of shadows.

 

“Hey, Joe,” my friend Steve asked me. “Mississippi Burning, that was a long time ago, right?” Was there a hint of nervousness in his voice?

 

“Yes, Steve, a long time ago.”

 

See? A Mississippi film apparently left a strong impression on a friend that still resonated more than a decade later.