It took a while for director Tina Mabry to tell folks that her first feature film, "Mississippi Damned," is based on her own family story.
After all, there's abuse and dysfunction of every kind in the movie. And usually, there's an unspoken rule that what goes on with family, stays with family.
But Mabry says when audience members tell her they can relate to her experiences, she realizes that her film is an opportunity to address issues that are rarely discussed.
"One audience member said to me, 'Yes it's a dysfunctional family, but you know what? It's normal and happens more often than we admit,' " Mabry said Sunday after the film's first screening at the Atlanta Film Festival.
"Mississippi Damned," which won the Grand Jury Award as the Best American Indie Film at the 2009 Philadelphia Film Festival, will screen again Thursday at the Midtown Art Cinema.
Set in rural Mississippi from 1986 to 1998, the story follows three youths who struggle in their own way to escape their town and break free of addiction, abuse and violence they either witnessed or experienced.
Mabry, 31, and a native of Tupelo, Miss., says she was still haunted by her past after she graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Televison in 2005, and decided to tell her story. It was filmed in 22 days with a handheld camera (for a raw documentary effect) in Ahoskie, N.C.
Atlanta actress Jasmine Burke has a significant role in the film as love interest of one of the main characters.
"When I read the script, I kept saying to myself that I know these people," says Burke, 22. "I remember card games at my auntie's house with Earth Wind & Fire blasting and everybody smoking cigarettes and drinking beer; the kids running around. We had hush-hush situations in our family, too."
Even so, Burke, who also has a role in the stage play "A Sunday Afternoon at Loehmanns" currently showing at the Ansley Park Playhouse, was nervous as she watched the completed film for the first time on Sunday, along with a sold-out audience.
"I was not prepared to see it all on screen. I didn't know how people were going to react because it was so raw and so real," she says. "I was sitting there wondering is everybody [in the audience] going to be okay? Are people ready for this kind of story?
Mabry says her most important critics were her family.
"They actually loved it. They said it was hard for them to watch in some parts because we had to relive a couple of moments that we'd rather not talk about. There were touched, though, that it was truthful and honest," she says.
Atlanta Film Festival
Through Saturday. Most tickets $10. Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema, 931 Monroe Drive, Atlanta. 678-495-1424;
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"Mississippi Damned," 1:30 p.m. Thursday at Midtown Art Cinema.
"Mississippi Damned," 1:30 p.m. Thursday at Midtown Art Cinema.
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