Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep is a 1978 American drama film edited, filmed, written, produced, and directed by Charles Burnett. Shot primarily in 1972 and 1973, it was originally submitted by Burnett to the UCLA School of Film in 1977 as his Master of Fine Arts thesis.

The film depicts the daily life of Stan, a weary slaughterhouse worker struggling to maintain his humanity while providing for his family amidst the poverty of 1970s Watts. Rather than following a traditional linear plot, Killer of Sheep is composed of a series of vignettes that capture the rhythms of working-class life, childhood innocence, and the systemic frustrations of the urban environment. Critic Dana Stevens described its plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film."

Shot in black and white, the film’s style is often likened to Italian neorealism. There are no acts, plot arcs or character development, as conventionally defined. The cast consists mainly of non-professional performers, including many children.

The film offers a vision of Watts of the early 1970s that is quite different from the Watts of several decades later. Filmed at the tail end of the Great Migration of blacks fleeing the South, most of the characters were either born in the South or their parents were (Burnett himself was born in Mississippi). Multiple references to Southern culture are made in the film.

Killer of Sheep premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York on November 14, 1978. It did not receive a general release because Burnett had not secured rights to the music used in its production. The music rights were licensed in 2007 (and again in 2024) by Milestone Film & Video for US $150,000 after the film was restored by UCLA and transferred from a 16 mm to a 35 mm print. Killer of Sheep received a 200+ city release 30 years after it was first premiered, with a DVD release in late 2007.

The film was restored by the UCLA preservationist Ross Lipman, presented on DVD by Steven Soderbergh and distributed by Milestone Films. In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".