Basketball Heaven follows filmmaker Resita Cox as she journeys through time to her hometown, Kinston, NC: the largest producer of NBA talent in the world. Basketball Heaven is a poetic community portrait of the unsung heroes and rich history of this small, Southern Black town.
SYNOPSIS
Basketball Heaven follows director Resita Cox as she returns to her hometown, Kinston, NC, an unlikely basketball mecca where Friday night games sell out and dreams take flight from community courts. But unlike traditional sports films, this is not a story about star athletes. This is a story about the people who make them: teachers, coaches, elders, and neighbors who raise and love beyond what they see. Through the lens of two central figures, Ms. Felicia Solomon, an educator and spiritual mother to generations, and Coach Jesse Miller, a community coach and father figure, the film explores how Black resilience, care, and tradition are passed down. Kinston itself becomes a character, shaped by segregation, a forgotten floodplain, and systemic disinvestment, yet still pulsating with culture, memory, and pride.
Alongside beloved mentors like Ms. Solomon and Coach Jesse, we meet Coach Tish Dixon, head girls’ basketball coach at Rochelle Middle School and a former classmate of Resita. A decorated athlete whose pro career was cut short by injury, Coach Tish now nurtures the next generation both on and off the court. With intimate access and lyrical narration, Resita confronts her own scarred childhood and finds healing in the community that helped her survive. At its heart, Basketball Heaven asks: What does it take to pour into others when the world refuses to pour into you?
Director Statement
I left my hometown of Kinston, North Carolina, at 18, never intending to return. Despite being one of the poorest cities in the state, Kinston is the world’s greatest per-capita producer of NBA talent—a place of beauty and heartbreak, triumph and loss. My story mirrors that duality: I’m an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker raised in deep poverty by parents battling addiction in a town scarred by trauma but defined by impossible wins. As Audre Lorde wrote, “we were never meant to survive.”
What I lacked at home, I found in my community—friends, teachers, coaches, and neighbors who held me up. Chief among them was Ms. Felicia Solomon, my first Black teacher, whose unofficial adoption of me in fifth grade changed the course of my life. Basketball Heaven is an ode to her, and to Kinston’s enduring spirit—a call back to our communal roots of survival and care.
Fifteen years after leaving, Spirit called me home. I now spend my summers in Eastern North Carolina running a youth film camp, nurturing the next generation of storytellers.
Basketball Heaven blends magical realism and vérité to create a poetic community portrait of Kinston—its basketball rhythm, its Southern textures, and its deep history. As a Kinston native and former editor of the Viking Press, I bring an insider’s perspective that transcends tropes of violence and poverty, revealing instead a community of resilience, love, and spiritual depth.
Supporter Statement
Resita has a track record of telling stories of Southern Black communities with empathy, artistry, joy, and power. We first supported her in 2023, when she was awarded a Project:Hatched grant to support post-production and impact campaign work for her film Freedom Hill. The film tells the story of Princeville, North Carolina—the first town chartered by freed Black people in America—and the threat of its erasure. The film, along with her impact campaign work launching a youth filmmaking camp and educating the public about media and the legacy of the town, sparked important conversations around environmental racism and how film itself can serve as a powerful tool in capturing, honoring, and highlighting the stories of everyday people.
More recently, Resita was selected to participate in our 2025 (Egg)celerator Lab program, which supports first- and second-time directors from around the world through a grant for the production of their feature-length film in addition to tailored and individual mentorship from our senior creative team. With her debut feature film, Resita is aiming to create a poetic community portrait of the Kinston, NC that despite systemic failings, have reigned supreme in basketball. It has been incredible to witness the progress she has made with this deeply personal film over the last year.
We are honored to have been a part of Resita’s journey and are excited about her future as a filmmaker, community organizer, and advocate. - Kiyoko McCrae, Program Director, Chicken & Egg Films
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Resita Cox
resita heavenly cox (b. 1994) is an Emmy-Award winning film director, community organizer, educator, and cultural philosopher whose practice centers on the concepts of Sun Ra’s myth science. This theoretical framework posits American Blackness as a myth, particularly within the confines of capitalism. resita uses moving images to reinterpret the complexities of Black life through a "third cinema" and impact-focused documentary lens. resita is a Hulu/Kartemquin Accelerator Fellow, North Star Fellow, 2024 Rockwood Documentary Leaders Fellow (Ford Foundation), a 2025 Chicken & Egg Eggcelorator Fellow, and 2024/2025 Grounded Possibilities Environmental Justice Fellow. She holds an MFA from Northwestern University and was named an Esteemed Artist by the City of Chicago in 2022. She is developing her debut feature, Basketball Heaven, a love letter to her hometown, Kinston, NC. This film won the 2023 South Pitch Documentary at New Orleans Film Festival, is supported by the Sundance Institute, and is a co-production with PBS through ITVS's Open Call. Her work is supported by Sundance, Chicken and Egg Pictures, Perspective Fund, PBS, Cucalorus, South Arts, Points North Institute, Chicago Filmmakers, and the Field Foundation.
Producer Crystal Isaac
Crystal Isaac is an Emmy Award–nominated producer whose work spans documentary film and television, focused on stories that illuminate race, gender, class, and justice in America.
Most recently, she is the Lead Producer of Basketball Heaven, an ITVS-funded feature documentary that captures the resilience of a Southern Black community confronting systemic inequities. Her recent credits include Dallas, 2019 (PBS, 2025), a five-part documentary series examining the political and social fabric of Dallas, and She Was First (PBS South Florida, 2026), a documentary series celebrating groundbreaking women who transformed culture and history. She also produced Down in the Valley (STARZ, 2024), a celebration of the Black Southern experience nominated for a 2025 GLAAD Media Award.
Crystal has produced content for HBO, CNN, BET, PBS, and Paramount+, including CNN’s United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, for which she received a 2023 Emmy nomination. She is a 2025–2026 Sundance Documentary Producing Fellow, selected for her work on Basketball Heaven.
Before producing, Crystal spent more than a decade in journalism, including at ABC News, where she covered national stories on race and inequality. Her work bridges journalism and cinematic storytelling, championing community-centered narratives that affirm Black life and resilience.
Outside of production, she serves on her local community board and teaches documentary producing workshops for emerging filmmakers in North Carolina and New York.
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