The Keeping Room

Daniel Barber : 2014

In rural South Carolina in the final days of the American Civil War, Augusta, her teenaged sister Louise, and their young African-American slave Mad have been left to maintain the family farm on their own. With all of the men – fathers, brothers, farmhands – long since departed for the battlefield and now presumed missing or dead, the three women harbour fears about the future, unaware that a greater peril is much closer at hand. When an illness sends Augusta to a nearby town in search of medicine, she finds a welter of death and terror wrought by two Yankee scouts, who have embarked upon some private pillaging in advance of the approaching Union Army. Though Augusta manages to escape their clutches, the renegades track her back to the farm. The ensuing battle between the young women and their assailants is fierce, furious, and unpredictable. A tale of survival capturing a transitional moment in history. As Augusta, Louise, and Mad combat the merciless marauders, their struggle takes place in the context of larger changes: the end of slavery, the end of an agrarian economy, and an end to these women's reliance on men for their safety and well-being. Daniel Barber's second feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, and had its European premiere at London Film Festival 2014.