Press Room

PBS Series Reel South Unveils 2026 Slate Spotlighting Indelible Southern Stories

Durham, NC — Reel South, the Peabody Award–winning series showcasing bold storytelling from across the American South, today announced its 2026 slate of feature documentaries and short films. The announcement coincides with a special Women’s History Month streaming premiere of Jan Beauboeuf: The Creative Spirit, an intimate portrait of an 88-year-old Louisiana artist whose lifelong creative practice reflects resilience, memory, and the enduring power of making art.

Spanning seven states, including the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a first for the series, the new season brings together filmmakers and subjects who step forward, often publicly, to challenge the forces shaping their communities. Whether confronting a wrongful conviction, opening dialogue around gun violence, protecting rivers on Native land, or redefining care and justice in their communities, the films follow people who transform lived experience into a form of action. Again and again, expression—through storytelling, music, performance, or art—becomes a way to push institutions and audiences toward compassion.

The season’s feature films tackle deeply personal stories. Night in West Texas (dir. Deb Esquenazi) reexamines the 1981 conviction of a gay Apache man accused of murdering a closeted priest, revealing decades of prejudice embedded in the justice system. In Louder Than Guns (dir. Doug Pray), Ketch Secor and his band The Old Crow Medicine Show are joined by journalist David Greene to travel the country following a Nashville school shooting, hosting open, community-driven conversations about gun violence. And in Drowned Land (dir. Colleen Thurston), produced with Vision Maker Media, a proposed dam in the Choctaw Nation sparks a filmmaker’s investigation into generations of Native displacement, environmental stewardship, and her own family’s complicated role in shaping the region’s waterways.

The season also features a special encore broadcast of Stay Prayed Up, the acclaimed documentary about gospel matriarch Mother Lena Mae Perry and North Carolina’s legendary gospel family group The Branchettes. The film captures the electrifying spirit of their performances while tracing how decades of faith, music, and leadership transformed a small church choir into one of the South’s most beloved gospel traditions.

That spirit of expression continues across the season’s short films, several of which arrive with momentum from winning the Reel South Short Award, presented at major film festivals. Among them are Red Sands, capturing a Mexican-American off-road community racing across the blazing Texas–Mexico border dunes; Discount Funeral, a haunting scrapbook portrait of small-town Alabama; Boil That Cabbage Down, in which a novice musician uncovers the banjo’s overlooked ties to slavery and racism; No Se Ve Desde Acá, an experimental meditation on Miami’s restless pursuit of the American Dream; and Police Dive, which follows a Virginia dive detective recovering evidence and his own spiritual healing from the bottom of a lake. The slate also includes George V, a portrait of a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant whose artwork found an unlikely audience amid Miami’s vibrant 1970s creative scene and an open-call selection of the film Teddy, following a Houston-based security guard by day and birth doula for Black mothers by calling.

Alongside its broadcast slate, Reel South expands its digital reach with additional streaming-first premieres on YouTube beginning next month and through the summer. Every film released will have a YouTube premiere in 2026, beginning in April and May, with additional short and feature films to be announced at a later date.

The eleventh season of Reel South is co-produced by PBS stations across the region, including Louisiana Public Broadcasting, PBS North Carolina, and South Carolina ETV. Public media continues to play a vital role in the nation’s cultural life, creating space for stories that deepen understanding and invite conversation. Across the South—long a region where difficult histories were not confronted head-on—Reel South highlights voices willing to engage the issues shaping our time with honesty, creativity, and hope. The slate also arrives at a moment of new momentum for the series, following the formalization of an integrated partnership with Southern Documentary Fund designed to strengthen pathways for Southern filmmakers from development through national distribution. Together, the collaboration signals a growing commitment to stories that reflect the complexity, resilience, and forward-looking spirit of the region.

2026 PBS Broadcast Premiere Schedule

May 4 — Night in West Texas
Dir. Deb Esquenazi

May 11 — Louder Than Guns
Dir. Doug Pray

May 18 — Stay Prayed Up (Season 8 special presentation)
Dirs. D.L. Anderson & Matt Durning

May 25 — Drowned Land
Dir. Colleen Thurston

June 1 — Shorts Compilation: Discount Funeral & No Se Ve Desde Acá

June 8 — Shorts Compilation: Jan Beauboeuf, Police Dive, & Teddy

June 15 — Shorts Compilation: Boil That Cabbage Down, Red Sands, & George V

Season 11 of Reel South is funded by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wyncote Foundation.