\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"L-R](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tL-R Diane Thomas, Sarah \u201cSallie\u201d Smith, and Savan Wilson in \u2018Sallie\u2019s Ashes\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Robi Creative<\/p>\n
\n\tAlabama Power had money and political influence. The Alabama grandmas \u2013 well, they had grit and a good story to tell, a superannuated trio doing what seemed like the impossible.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe original pitch from my producer Daniel Junge was irresistible: A small group of grandmothers in Alabama have banded together to fight for the future of their beloved Mobile Bay,\u201d Robideaux writes in a director\u2019s statement. \u201cThe target was a toxic coal ash pit perched on the banks of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, threatening to poison one of the most biodiverse regions in the country.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAnd as a filmmaker, my immediate excitement was about capturing the journey of a few determined grannies as they learned to build a website, create social media accounts, and speak out at public events; all in an e\ufb00ort to build a coalition who would care as much about this looming environmental crisis as they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tDirector Brennan Robideaux<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Robi Creative<\/p>\n
\n\tRobideaux lives in Louisiana, one state over from Alabama. His credits include the feature documentary Born to Fly (2022), the short doc A Riehl Blacksmith (2013) and several fictional shorts, including Tanked (2016). <\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Robideaux and Junge approached Smith about the possibility of a doing a film about her, she \u201cbluntly told us that if we wanted to make a documentary, we\u2019d better do it soon, as she had just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time\u2013this one being much more severe than the first,\u201d Robideaux writes. \u201cI called the only person I knew would be willing to drop everything and join me on a crazy idea, my creative collaborator Allison Bohl DeHart, and together we journeyed to Mobile, Alabama the next day.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe women were everything we could have hoped for: funny, charming, and disarmingly sharp. But Sallie\u2019s illness, ever-present in the background, layered the film with urgency. This wasn\u2019t just a story about coal ash and activism; it became a film about purpose, dignity, and joy at the end of life, even when the odds are stacked against you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Robi Creative<\/p>\n
\n\tSallie\u2019s Ashes premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and has gone on to screen at DOC NYC, the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (HSDFF) in Arkansas, the New Orleans Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, the Hawai\u2019i International Film Festival, and more. The film was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the Critics\u2019 Choice Documentary Awards and earned a Special Mention at HSDFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn a time when activism is urgent,\u201d the HSDFF jury wrote, \u201cthe film shows the power of people standing up for their communities and what they believe in. With a character-driven and playful approach, the film paints an endearing portrait of Sallie, and fellow retirees Diane and Savan, as they take on the serious work of organizing against toxic coal ash.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tRobideaux concludes his director\u2019s statement by writing, \u201cAt its core, Sallie\u2019s Ashes is not just about coal ash. It\u2019s a reminder that the most unlikely voices can carry the greatest weight; and that sometimes, the fight for the future rests in the hands of those who know they won\u2019t live to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Smith, known as Sallie, was facing very serious illness when she took on the single most powerful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[115082,172289,134168,88,206,172290,172291],"class_list":{"0":"post-344246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-awardsdoc","9":"tag-brennan-robideaux","10":"tag-daniel-junge","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-sallie-smith","14":"tag-sallies-ashes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}