Ross McElwee’s Bright Leaves describes a journey across the social, economic, and psychological tobacco terrain of his native North Carolina, which produces more tobacco than any other state in America. A subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for the state, the film is about loss and preservation, addiction and denial. And it’s about filmmaking—home movie, documentary, and fiction filmmaking—as McElwee fences with the legacy of an obscure Hollywood melodrama that is purportedly based on the life of his great-grandfather, who created the famous brand of tobacco known as “Bull Durham.” McElwee explores the notion of legacy—what one generation passes down to the next—and how this can be a particularly complicated topic when the legacy under discussion is both a Southern one and tied to tobacco.