Captured in soaring overhead shots, Silver Dollar Road is hazy, lush, and calm, with tall pine trees towering over grassy fields on the way to the shoreline.
Down on the ground, things are less tranquil.
The road, which gives its name to Raoul Peck’s latest documentary, leads down to a sprawling beachfront property in North Carolina that’s been the site of a raging legal battle between the Reels, a Black family that owned the land for over a century, and the real estate developers trying to take it from them.
Eventually, two Reels family members, Melvin Davis and Licurtus Reels, serve an eight-year prison sentence for failing to vacate their own homes.With “Silver Dollar Road,” Peck continues the examination of racial disenfranchisement in America that he masterfully tackled in “I Am Not Your Negro.” Here, instead of an epic exploration of these issues within the framework of James Baldwin’s bold,…
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