In the Pines has been nominated for Best Short Film at The HB Film Festival in Paisley, Scotland!

In the Pines is a short film directed by Dugan Bridges and tells the story of a group of friends in turn-of-the-century North Carolina (USA) who get caught up in a massively violent campaign of propaganda and violence that swept the southern state in the lead-up to the Wilmington Coup of 1898.

In the Pines stars Pandora Broadwater as Scarlett Manning, now an older woman, who retells a story from her youth to a less than friendly documentary filmmaker with narrative goals of his own. In an attempt to help her newspaperman father, the younger Scarlett (played by Amara Ayer) gets caught up in the machinations of the power elite and tries to help save her friends and escape the city before it’s too late.

The film is set amidst the Democratic Party’s white supremacy campaign of 1898, a coordinated effort to destroy the union of blacks, Republicans, and populists that briefly ousted the Democrats from power in 1896. The violence culminated in an armed insurrection and takeover of Wilmington, the only coup d’etat to take place on U.S. soil.

The HB Film Festival brings to Paisley, Scotland, a quality selection of both local and international shorts and feature movies coming from all over the world and aims to become a cultural gathering for film lovers and professionals to support the creation of networks between filmmakers and the local communities and to initiate inspiring exchanges between filmmakers and professionals coming from different artistic disciplines.”

In the Pines
running time: 19 minutes
Directed by Dugan Bridges
Produced by Greg de Deugd