“An Exploration of Whiteness and the Flattering Illusions of History”: Suzannah Herbert on her Tribeca-Winning Natchez

Suzannah Herbert’s Natchez is a multilayered, character-driven look at the titular town in Mississippi (U.S.), which is wholly dependent on a declining industry. In this case, the manufacturing is of whitewashed tales that have turned into hardened history. For generations, Natchez has been financially dependent on its antebellum tourism industry, in which hoop-skirted docents in grand mansions regale visitors with, as one knowing character puts it, a “Southern construct” that’s “used to sell tickets.” Unfortunately for Natchez’s bottom line, though fortunately for its Black residents and others eager to reckon with the past, fewer and fewer folks these days seem to be buying the Confederate dream. The film is a sensitive, sympathetic portray of a Gone with the Wind-cinematic city that initially made the Memphis-born Herbert feel “uncomfortable to the point of wanting to look away.”

Just prior to the film’s Tribeca Documentary Competition premiere, Documentary caught up with Herbert (Wrestle) to learn all about her stellar sophomore feature. Last week, Tribeca announced that Natchez won not only the best documentary feature prize but also special jury awards for cinematography (to Noah Collier) and editing (Pablo Proenza). This interview has been edited.

DOCUMENTARY: What drew you to Natchez specifically? Why shoot a documentary there as opposed to all the other Deep South towns with an antebellum tourism industry?

SUZANNAH HERBERT: When I began my research for this film in 2018, I started with my family and friend circles. Because of my parents’ art careers based in Memphis, they have roots and friends all over the South, most of whom I’ve known my whole life.

I set off on a road trip with my mother, stopping to tour historic sites and talk with people in Mississippi and all along River Road in Louisiana. Over several years I developed relationships with the staff at a plantation in Louisiana that was attempting to tell a more inclusive history of their site, while also being financially reliant on hosting weddings. We started filming there but eventually the board revoked our access. It was pretty devastating. I gave up on the idea for six months.

Fortunately, the film revived when I was accepted into the Logan Nonfiction Program. They encouraged me to use the fellowship to figure out another approach. I went back to my early research, travels and interviews, and kept feeling drawn to Natchez. My first visit there had been unsettling — the clash of beauty and horror was so confronting and strange. I felt uncomfortable to the point of wanting to look away, but my producer Darcy McKinnon and I realized we needed to lean into that tension.

The more time I spent in Natchez, and the more people I met, the more I discovered a diverse community grappling with its history and its future. It became clear to me that the web of stories and lives across the Natchez community would be a rich place to explore the themes I was interested in exploring.

D: How long was the filmmaking process? How many years did you spend embedding with the community? 

SH: I first became interested in how we tell antebellum American history when I was invited to a wedding on a plantation. I was taken aback, and then started to think more critically about how people use historic sites in a variety of ways; for celebrations and weddings, and in the process, intentionally or not, contribute to the erasure of the difficult histories that those sites contain and represent. 

I started reading books on Southern history and memory. I did dozens of audio interviews with professionals in the public history space. In 2022, I started spending time in Natchez in earnest. I spent about a month there by myself without a camera. Then cinematographer Noah Collier and I started production in the fall of 2022 and wrapped during the summer of 2024, filming around 100 days. Our longest shoot was six weeks straight; that consecutive time was absolutely essential to my process of understanding the town dynamics and becoming intimately involved in a diverse group of people’s lives. 

We edited from January 2024 until September 2024 (three days before I gave birth!) and then finished the film this spring.

D: How did you decide who to cast? Were any characters and storylines left on the cutting room floor?

SH: The casting process was pretty organic; it happened the way we build relationships in the South, by talking to folks on the street. I started taking the tours you see in the film. I walked along the river bluff and struck up conversations with strangers. Almost everyone would tell me, “You should talk to this person.” 

I met Tracy at a friend’s cocktail party. She intrigued me, as a not-so-typical Southern belle. When I asked her to show me her antebellum dress, tiny Tracy climbed up a 10-foot ladder to a cupboard closet and threw down her hoop. She was warm and open and, as it turned out, not from genteel stock, which made her story more compelling to me. 

I was at the visitor’s center gathering information and brochures when Rev recruited me onto his van, exactly like he charms the three women in his opening scene. I was blown away by the history he told, his humor, and the ways he affected people on tour. I immediately knew he would stand out onscreen. Most people in the tourism industry in Natchez are professional performers so they are amazing on camera. But ultimately I focused on Tracy, Rev, Debbie, and David because of their inner lives, and vulnerability with me in the off-hours from their tourism careers. I wanted to learn more about each person behind the public-facing persona.

I probably went on 75 tours throughout my time in Natchez. Everyone in town is a character. We looked to Altman’s Nashville as a guide in many ways, and wanted each character’s life to move us through the city into the next scene. The film has a multitude of characters already but we had to leave tons of stuff on the cutting room floor! Approach-wise, we filmed our main participants’ personal lives with a much greater depth than what ended up onscreen. For example, Rev runs for a county commissioner seat; in an earlier cut we had that whole storyline woven throughout. 

Ultimately, the film felt bogged down with the extra personal threads. With our incredible editor Pablo Proenza, we decided that the best direction to take would be to focus on the larger story of our country, and how people in Natchez are telling that story today.

D: Though I’m guessing your Southern roots and a career focus on the American South might have been helpful in gaining access, I’m curious to hear how race and gender also affected the production. It seems certain admissions were captured by your camera that likely wouldn’t have been in the presence of a Black crew. 

SH: Your assumptions are spot on. In many ways the film is an exploration of whiteness, and the flattering illusions of history that I as a white Southerner wanted to explore.

Some of the people we met saw themselves in me—a polite Southern white woman. That privileged, almost automatic access gained me entry into a world that would have been closed off to nonwhite, non-Southern people. Ser Boxley told me in our first interview, “[They] tell us what they really think when they’re at home in the kitchen and there’s no Black people around.” I took that to heart for filming. But in other areas of the process it was extremely important to us to collaborate with Black filmmakers, and to take their advice and creative perspective. 

From the beginning we have relied on EPs Sam Pollard and Jackie Glover; from ITVS and Independent Lens we worked with Noland Walker and Keri Archer Brown, both of whom are Southern; as well as our associate editor Jesse Allain-Marcus, who watched every minute of footage and was a key creative collaborator.

D: Have all the characters seen the final film? Is everyone (including David, whose bombshell scene rattled me to the core) onboard with how they are portrayed?

SH: A few weeks ago Darcy and I went to Natchez to screen the film for our main participants. Tracy was greatly moved by the film and excited to come to NYC for our Tribeca Festival premiere. David thanked us for inviting him, said “the film is very well put together” and “it could have been worse.”

Debbie and Rev wanted to wait to see the film at Tribeca. When I gently pushed to show it to them in Natchez, Rev asked if I liked the film. I said, “Yes, I love it.” Rev responded, “Then that’s all I need to know.”

Lauren Wissot is a film critic and journalist, filmmaker and programmer, and a contributing editor at both Filmmaker magazine and Documentary magazine. She also writes regularly for Modern Times Review (The European Documentary Magazine) and has served as the director of programming at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival.