"Papaw Land," the debut feature film by Arkansas-based director Justin Blake Crum, will be available Tuesday on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and other streaming outlets.
The movie, written by Crum and co-produced by his wife, Jessica, is set in the late '90s and tells the story of Matthew, a troubled 17-year-old who is sent by his mom to spend a summer with his grandfather in the Arkansas Ozarks. It was filmed in the Searcy County town of Leslie during the summer of 2018 and stars 85-year-old John Stiritz of Conway as Papaw. Carson Mitchell of Bismarck plays Matthew and Spring Hunter of Conway is Matthew's mom, Christy.
"We wanted to tell an authentic story about rural life in Arkansas, and felt the best way to do that was to find as much local talent as possible, people who have really lived it," said Crum, who lives in Conway, in a news release. "We ended up finding a really talented cast of local Arkansans; most of them had never acted in a film before, or never acted at all."
The film won Best Film and the Audience Award at the Knoxville Film Festival in Tennessee. It has also been screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival, Queens World Film Festival in New York and the Richmond International Film Festival in Crum's home state of Virginia.
In January it was shown at Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock as part of the Arkansas Cinema Society's Arkansas Filmmaker Spotlight Series.