“From the Hills & Hollers” film series brings OHIO alum Carter Sickels back to Athens for special screening of “The Evening Hour”

Since 2022, The Athena Cinema has been bringing “From the Hills & Hollers” to moviegoers across Athens, a that “seeks to foster a deeper connection between the residents of Athens city and the ������ý community to the cultural legacy of the surrounding region through films that examine the many facets, both positive and negative, of life in Appalachia.”

The next installment of the series will be a screening of “The Evening Hour,” a 2020 film based on Carter Sickels’ novel of the same name, on Sept. 18, at 7 p.m.

“‘The Evening Hour’…takes place in an economically depressed Appalachian community in West Virginia, and the protagonist…is a nurse's aide at a nursing home,” Sickels, an OHIO alum (’95) and an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, said. “He’s also kind of a small-town drug dealer...one of the questions the book and the movie are asking is how do you imagine a meaningful future for yourself and how do you stay in a place that has been so radically changed, or that doesn’t feel like home anymore?”

These, along with other questions posed by the compelling narrative, will be explored before the screening during Sickels’ pre-show talk. He will talk about where it was filmed, how it was created and how the characters in the film developed in conjunction with the actors, among other things.

“Part of it too is capturing this place, a place that can be sort of stereotyped and trying to find and really show the beauty…and I hope that I did in the book, and I think that the film does too.”

According to Tiffany Arnold, an associate professor of instruction in the College of Health Science and Professions, this will be the first time a story’s creator will be in attendance at a series screening. Not only making the screening special for attendees, but also carrying a personal significance for Sickels.

“I did go to OHIO…and went to that theater and watched movies there, so it feels really special to get to be there,” Sickels said. “My grandparents were in Albany and had a lot of family around in that area, and it was a setting and a place that was really meaningful for me and is still this place that I carry around with me.”

As a longtime fan of Sickels’ work and champion of his writing while teaching her classes, Arnold shares his excitement on his return to Athens.

“The way Carter writes about southeast Ohio, I’m from here but there’s no way I could have described it in the way that he can describe it,” Arnold, who is also the coordinator of the Appalachian Studies Certificate, as well as the founder of the “From the Hills & Hollers” series, said. “I’m hoping that people can see that people come from here that are artists and care about this place and are able to love it while recognizing that it’s not perfect.”

The duality of recognizing the flaws and beauties of Appalachian culture is one of Arnold’s favorite aspects of Sickels’ work, and an important concept for community members to internalize.

“In my classes, I talk about how a lot of people look at it from a very deficit-based perspective, and that’s really unfortunate because there are so many wonderful, amazing things that happen here all the time, and wonderful people that come from here, but a lot of that gets lost in conversations around hard things,” Arnold said. “Carter’s work is so powerful because it shows both sides of that in a really real and respectful way that isn’t just reinforcing what people already think about us.”

The upcoming screening of “The Evening Hour” is free to the public, but tickets are required in advance. Visit the for more information and to book a spot.