Disney's Sounder (2003)

An extremely powerful and uplifting story about a family of black sharecroppers, the Morgans, set in rural Louisiana during the early 1930s, DISNEY'S SOUNDER is an adaptation of the Newberry Award winning novel by William H. Armstrong. Originally made into a film in 1972 by Martin Ritt, this SOUNDER was directed by the star of that earlier film, Kevin Hooks. Here, Daniel Lee Robertson stars as David Lee Morgan, a young man whose father is sent to jail after stealing a ham to feed his family. Acting as the man of the house until the crops are in, David eventually sets off on a journey to find his father, and along the way achieves his dream of learning to read while also learning some hard lessons about life.

A family film that realistically deals with the hardships of being poor and black in America, SOUNDER is an intensely moving picture no less important today than it was in 1972.