Hanna Miller is a documentary film director and director of photography from Collins, Mississippi. Her background is in Russian language and culture, southern and rural identities, and sexual assault crisis response. Hanna’s career has introduced her to diabetic Samoan writers, civil war fighters, and southern Russian mail order brides. In 2018, Hanna’s short documentary “We Became Fragments” was considered for an Oscar nomination, and in 2021, she will premiere her first feature-length film. In her spare time, Hanna enjoys pickling foods and learning taxidermy.

Mississippi Mercedes

Down in Magnolia, Mississippi, pro-Trump, anti-immigration, anti-gay marriage, lesbian, once-“illegal” Colombian immigrant Mercedes Ricks offers community, job opportunity, and hard lessons in sacrifice to a dying town. Each due to and despite her contradictory beliefs, Mercedes jolted Magnolia in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina uprooted her from New Orleans and stranded her in this town of 1,700, where she eventually opened a restaurant: La Mariposa. La Mariposa offers Magnolia economic mobility and sodality, as well as a theater for Mercedes’ ever-evolving management style. When Mercedes runs for local office, can she transfer her leadership from La Mariposa to the stage of Magnolia at-large? If so, will that finally prove Mercedes deserves to belong, will it betray her contradictions to an unforgiving small town — or both?