ALWAYS IN SEASON Truth and Justice

Running for president in 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech about race relations in America and paraphrased William Faulkner: “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” These words ring eerily true in Jacqueline Olive’s stunning debut documentary that depicts the haunting death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy in the rural community of Bladenboro, North Carolina in 2014. With Lacy’s body found hanging from a swing set, his death is ruled a suicide, but his mother, convinced that he was lynched, remains undaunted in her pursuit of justice.

Drawing strong parallels between past and present, Olive depicts the devastating history of lynching in the U.S. and a community’s attempt, through an annual re-enactment, to ensure that victims of a 1946 quadruple lynching in Monroe, Georgia are never forgotten. ALWAYS IN SEASON won the Documentary Prize at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in 2019.