Filmmaker Suzannah Herbert's documentary “Natchez” is part of Park City Film’s upcoming America the Beautiful Series, which celebrates the diversity of the American experience on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Winner of Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, the film asks a quiet but insistent and very pertinent question: what history is worth preserving, and at what cost?
Natchez, Mississippi, is a town whose economic engine depends on a twice-yearly event called The Pilgrimage, which looks like “Gone With the Wind” brought to life. Tourists flock to the tours of these plantations, led by the descendants of plantation owners. Dressed in hoop skirts, they offer a romanticized version of the city’s antebellum history.
The film contrasts these fairy-tale tours with those given by Reverend Tracy Collins, or Rev. He takes visitors to the Natchez National Historical Park, where another side of the city’s history is exposed. Natchez was the second-largest market for enslaved people in the United States, one where 750,000 human beings were bought and sold.
It’s the extraordinary characters in present-day Natchez, who grapple with what part of the city’s history to elevate, that gives the film its strength. Deborah is the first African-American to host a Pilgrimage tour. In her home lived 124 enslaved people, whose stories and memories she honors. And then there is Gene, who refuses to sell his historic land needed by the National Historical Park to expand, because he believes it, “promotes the memory of something bad, that’s over and done with.”
Patient and confident, Herbert’s skill as a documentarian pays off. She carefully peels back layer after layer, as encounters between characters become progressively challenging. The trust she’s earned is clear in the unguarded moments she captures: the homeowners who call the people their families enslaved “servants;” a shocking racist aside by a Pilgrimage host. That she also captures delight, humor, and the shifts in attitude make “Natchez” both hopeful and compelling.
“Natchez” speaks to one of the defining tensions of American life: who gets to define history, who gets left out of the telling, and how those versions can slowly begin to change. The film runs 86 powerful minutes.
“Natchez” screens Friday, June 26th at 7 p.m. at the Park City Library, followed by a Q&A with director Suzannah Herbert. The America the Beautiful series continues Saturday, June 27th with “Remaining Native” and “Third Act,” both with post-film discussions, and closes with “Give Me the Ball,” presented with Summit Pride.
