Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.

Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

Killer of Sheep was shot on location in Watts in a series of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000, most of which was grant money. Finished in 1977 and shown sporadically, its reputation grew and grew until it won a prize at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival.

Since then, the Library of Congress has declared it a national treasure as one of the first fifty on the National Film Registry and the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the "100 Essential Films" of all time.

Milestone's premiere of the restored Killer of Sheep was at the 2007 Berlinale Film Festival.

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The Charles Burnett Project was completed with the support of International Film Circuit, Inc., Steven Soderbergh and Turner Classic Movies. Shot in 16mm, restored to 35mm by UCLA Film and Television Archive. Sound restoration in collaboration with Audio Mechanics. © 1977 Charles Burnett.

"If Killer of Sheep were an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene memorized."
— MICHAEL TOLKIN, SCREENWRITER

"Killer of Sheep caught the lives of the children with a fidelity to how kids really do fight, play, and cry — and how they can sometimes be cruel simply because they're so scared."
— ROGER EBERT

"What the Italian neorealists accomplished in the years after World War II... Burnett— a one-man African-American New Wave—achieved with [Killer of Sheep]: he gave a culture, a people, a nation new images of themselves."
— NELSON KIM, SENSES OF CINEMA

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