Black SNOW
As fires from sugarcane burning in the Florida Everglades blanket the Glades communities, Black Snow stays with residents as smoke and black ash fold into everyday life. Filmed in verité, the film observes homes, churches, classrooms, and city chambers where sugar is both lifeline and burden.
Each harvest season, cane fields around Lake Okeechobee are set on fire to burn leafy waste from the stalks. In Belle Glade, Pahokee, and South Bay, black ash locals call “black snow” drifts over daily life.
Black Snow is a verité film that follows residents as this season shapes routines, choices, and a sense of home.
Nestled by Lake Okeechobee, the Glades is home to major U.S. sugar producers. During harvest, cane fields are set ablaze to remove leafy waste that would otherwise make processing more expensive, and nearby towns live with the air and ash this practice creates.
The film stays with daily life and with how people seek help from local officials and in Washington DC. Not all communities have carried this burden equally. In the 1990s, new limits were added when eastward winds affected wealthier neighborhoods, while protections to the west remained weaker.
Black Snow does not argue a case. It listens and looks at how environment shapes identity, health, work, and belonging, and it returns to a question heard across the Glades: Will this be the last burn season?
With striking cinematography and sound, Black Snow gathers the textures of a place where fire marks the calendar.