In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

Patient in developing characters and vividly immersed in its setting, this smartly structured adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s book also feels novelistic. Beautifully shot by Oscar® nominee Rachel Morrison, Mudbound tells a saga about the era’s racial and gender politics without ever being didactic.