I was inspired to create this film in January 2020, a month before my great grandmother transitioned. This film is inspired by her life and legacy and how she’s always been the foundation and matriarch of my family. This film is in honor of my late great grandmother who raised me, my mother, my grandmother, and so many others. This film is a love letter to Black women, family, community, and caretakers everywhere. 

The main conflict of the film is between Sahrah and her mother Monique and her grandmother Linda. Sahrah has a desire to travel the world and make films, but she has a choice to make that could potentially change her life and everyone around her. Granny, Sahrah’s great grandmother, has given Sahrah her house. A house that hasn’t been lived in for over 10 years since Granny came to live with Linda, but a house that Granny owns, nonetheless. Like many neighborhoods, the community is going through gentrification. Businesses are closing. People they’ve always known and seen in the neighborhood are being displaced. Sahrah, Monique, and Linda can’t hold on to Granny, but they can hold on to a piece of her. Everyone has an opinion about what Sahrah should do, but ultimately the choice is hers. Sell the house and use the money to travel the world or keep and maintain the house that Granny worked for, paid off, and raised her family in?

Building on Black womanist traditions of autobiography and an exploration of intergenerational relationships, the film will create opportunities for women to tell their own stories while exploring the dynamics of their connection to each other. This film will build on the essay, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens and the 2021 documentary, In Our Mother’s Gardens, both of which speak to the spiritual and creative essence of Black women and how this essence lives throughout generations of Black women. Granny’s Daughters also engages the work of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, specifically in relation to the themes of family, home, and transition. Sahrah’s desire to leave home and travel the world can be compared to the Peazant’s family’s desire to leave home and move to the mainland. 

Although this film will contribute to the growing collection of Black women’s expressive arts and storytelling techniques, it is unique in its ability to portray the desires and challenges of each Black women of different generations within this connected familial unit. Additionally, there are very few films that explore intergenerational relationships amongst Black women with stories that are not rooted in pain, trauma, or heartache. This film explores the importance of ownership, literally and figuratively, ownership of property and ownership of one’s own voice and desires. Granny’s Daughters explores the challenges of balancing generational differences within family. It is similar to Jane the Virgin in that each character is of equal importance and invites the audience into the lives of these very different yet similar women. 

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-Summer J. Robinson