Chicken Dreaming Corn (2004)

In Chicken Dreaming Corn—the title is a Romanian expression for yearning for something special—Hoffman takes a poignant, illuminating look at immigrant Jews in the deep-dish South, inspired by his grandparents' lives at the turn of the 20th century in Mobile, Ala. Though storekeeper Morris Kleinman may seem a bit too good-hearted to be true, Hoffman reveals the kinds of secrets that often hide behind prejudice—one Klansman is a Jew who fathers a child with a black woman. The past is never really over, and in Roy Hoffman's world at least, the chicken gets the corn more often than not.