ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
When the signs of a once-in-a-generation ecological event begin stirring on her family’s West Tennessee land, a hard-living Memphis nightclub owner returns home to perform the ritual her lineage demands—and to face the one she left behind without saying goodbye.

SYNOPSIS
HOLLER is a Southern Gothic neo-western set in the mythic landscapes of West Tennessee, exploring spiritual inheritance, belonging, and the complicated pull of home through the relationship between Black women, ancestral land, and the natural world.

The film follows Hagar, a restless, self-determined woman who has spent years building a life on her own terms as the owner of a Memphis nightclub. When an uncanny ecological and celestial event known as The Opening approaches, she is called back to the family land her lineage has held for generations. Every nineteen years, The Opening thins the boundary between the living and the dead, requiring the women of Hagar’s family to perform a ritual that manages what crosses over. Though Hagar has long resisted these traditions and the responsibilities they carry, her return is complicated by the memory of Jules, the man she left behind. As the event draws near, she begins to hope that she might see him again.

In HOLLER, the landscape is both setting and emotional archive: a living witness to generations of history, grief, and spiritual knowledge. The supernatural emerges organically from the natural world, blurring the boundaries between the material and the otherworldly. Moving between the neon-lit, self-invented world of Memphis and the elemental rhythms of her family’s land, Hagar must confront the inheritance she has resisted and the grief she has never resolved.

As a story of ancestral responsibility, estrangement, and reconciliation, HOLLER asks what we owe the people and places that made us, and whether belonging requires returning to what we left behind. Ultimately, Hagar’s journey reveals that reconciliation does not mean reclaiming the past, but learning to carry its weight without allowing it to determine the future.

PROJECT TYPE Narrative Short

DIRECTOR Allison Janae Hamilton
SCREENWRITER Allison Janae Hamilton
PRODUCER Jaselle Martino
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Antonino D’Ambrosio

WEBSITE allisonjanaehamilton.com

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