Sundance: ‘Descendant’ chronicles a Black history uncovered

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Rarely have past and present mingled in a documentary the way they do in “Descendant,” a nonfiction account of the last known ship to bring African captives to the American South for enslavement. Margaret Brown’s “Descendant,” which recently premiered at the virtual Sundance Film Festival, chronicles the discovery of the ship, a 90-foot-long wooden schooner that was secretly burned and sunk near Mobile, Alabama, after it was used to illegally take and enslave 100 Africans on a trip across the Atlantic, decades after the international slave trade had been outlawed. “Descendant” closely documents the finding of the Clotilda, which was confirmed in 2019. For locals, it’s a long overdue affirmation of a long-obscured history that was little spoken of for a century.