Killer of Sheep

A tender portrait of Black American life in a working-class Los Angeles neighbourhood as we observe a slaughterhouse worker’s struggle to provide for his loving family.

Stan is a slaughterhouse worker, living in a rundown mostly Black neighbourhood in Watts, Los Angeles. The struggles to provide for his family begin to wear him down but amid life's daily disappointments and hardships, Stan finds moments of tenderness with his wife. Meanwhile, his rowdy young children find a wide-eyed sense of play and wonderment among the gritty urban landscape.

Curator’s note
Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep remained mostly unseen for decades due to music copyright issues, but the film’s reputation grew as it circulated the festival scene and developed a swell of critical appraisal. It’s growing stature, resulting in the film being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Burnett's stark portrait finds a clear echo in Lynne Ramsay's feature debut Ratcatcher (1999), set in a low-income housing estate in Glasgow. The kinship between the two films is most vivid in their authentic, lived in-depiction of working-class life and in the way children play with such unselfconscious ferocity.