Shotgun Stories

Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father.

Son Hayes never speaks of the scars on his back. The men he works with take bets on how he got them. His brothers, Boy and Kid Hayes, don't discuss it. His past, just like these scars, is never far behind him. This stands true for the memory of his father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman who blames them for the life she's been left with and the man she could not keep. Their father managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a Christian, and fathered four new sons. All of whom received proper names.

At the start of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. Following a dispute at their father's funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and their half brothers. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. But now it is a thing that will rise up to overtake them all. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

“SHOTGUN STORIES defines the classic western phrase 'doing what a man’s got to do' as both a moral imperative and a biological compulsion.” (Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times)

“Like his fellow Mason-Dixon minimalist David Gordon Green (the film’s producer), [director] Nichols favors mood and ellipses over momentum and explanations, which gives this contemporary Hatfields-versus-McCoys narrative a beguiling, drifting atmosphere.” (David Fear, Time Out New York)

“An understated gem.” (Michael Ordoño, LA Times)