J Paul Johnson
Here in the spring of 2025, Killer of Sheep is having its moment. It was 48 years ago that Charles Burnett finally finished up his thesis film at UCLA. He’d been shooting for over five years in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, mostly with nonprofessional actors and his friends supporting him as both cast and crew. At UCLA, tuition had been cheap and provided him the gear he needed—just enough to see the film through to completion. He hadn’t imagined it screening beyond at school. But Killer of Sheep gradually earned worldwide acclaim—the Critics’ Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1981, selection as one of the first fifty films on the US National Film Registry in 1990, and the National Society of Film Critics’ naming it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time in 2002.
For all that recognition, Killer of Sheep remained a little-seen film, at least until a 35mm restoration in 2007 led to its subsequent commercial distribution. This spring, it’s finally getting the royal treatment it deserves, with a 4K restoration supervised by Burnett, a theatrical re-release from Kino Lorber, and a new Criterion Collection 4K UHD + Blu-ray two-disc special edition physical media release package in late May. A film practically synonymous with the Black indie filmmaking movement known as the L.A. Rebellion, Killer of Sheep is more than ready for its close-up: with its unscripted feel, neo-Neorealist cinematography, and fragile balance of humor and gloom, Burnett’s film gleams in its new 4K incarnation.
There is no plot to speak of in a traditional sense: there are, in Killer of Sheep, characters and conflicts but no single causal narrative arc. Instead, the film plays as a series of vignettes loosely connected to its central character, Stan, a slaughterhouse worker, husband, and father played by Henry Gayle Sanders whose fatigue and disconnection are undeniably palpable. Stan’s wife (that is the character’s “name” as credited, played by Kaycee Moore) pines for the connection they once shared, and their children roam freely around Watts’ dilapidated projects, tossing rocks for kicks. Meanwhile, Stan’s buddies, apparently without the same steady income he earns, try to coax him into an easy-money scheme from which no good can come.
To try to characterize Killer of Sheep‘s oblique narrative in this way, though, doesn’t quite capture the film’s elusive, elliptical, lyrical qualities. In more than a few scenes, little may happen, at least in terms of narrative importance, but the imagery of the everyday street-level camerawork is indelible. In an era when black lives were rarely depicted onscreen save for Blaxploitation thrillers, Burnett’s film presented everyday life in Black communities without sensationalism. Equally documentary and poetic in nature, Killer of Sheep is eighty minutes of haunting images and memorable vignettes that encapsulate Watts life in the 1970s with a quiet grace and visual flair.
Every bit as memorable as the film’s indelible imagery is its soundtrack, restored here for the first time in its entirety. Burnett had made the film on a minuscule budget of just $10,000: $3,000 from a grant, the rest raised on his own. But he’d envisioned the film as something of an aural history of African-American popular music, from Paul Robeson and Arthur Crudup to Etta James and Dinah Washington to Earth, Wind & Fire. Every selection has its purpose, but Robeson’s “The House I Live In” and Washington’s “This Bitter Earth”—the latter a substitution made out of necessity—are especially impactful, conveying the pride and sorrow of Stan and his community’s experience.
Burnett had been studying to be an electrician at Los Angeles Community College when he happened into a creative writing course from novelist and war correspondent Isabelle Ziegler. With her encouragement, Burnett reconsidered his career plans and enrolled at UCLA, first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student in film: there he and his colleagues studied the work of Renoir and Ray and developed the anti-establishment streak that rebelled against the prevailing dogma of the day, especially the lowbrow Blaxploitation films that did well at the box office. It may have taken the better part of a decade for Burnett to complete Killer of Sheep, and he may never have planned for it to be seen beyond UCLA, but the film proved surprisingly influential and inspirational. And in 2022, it was one of seven titles by prominent Black filmmakers selected in the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Critic’s Top 100 Films of All Time poll.
Following the remaster’s theatrical release April 18, 2025 in New York City, The Criterion Collection has announced a May 27, 2025 release date for its two-disc director-approved 4K UHD + Blu-ray special edition Spine #1262. Alongside the UCLA/Milestone restoration, the Criterion edition is set to ship with an ancillary audio commentary featuring director Charles Burnett and film scholar Richard Peña; New interviews with Burnett and actor Henry Gayle Sanders; an appreciation by filmmaker Barry Jenkins; two short films by Burnett; an interview with Burnett by film scholar Jacqueline Stewart; a 2019 Robert Townsend-directed documentary, A Walk with Charles Burnett; and a documentary on the 2007 cast reunion. The release marks Criterion’s continued dedication to improving their catalog of films written and directed by Black filmmakers in recent years.
