Written by Obie Award-winner Leslie Lee from an original story by producer Elsa Rassbach and directed by Bill Duke, THE KILLING FLOOR tells the struggle to build an interracial labor union in the Chicago Stockyards, tracing the racial and class conflicts in the city’s giant slaughterhouses, which boiled over in the Chicago Race Riot in 1919.
Anita is a rebellious sixteen-year-old caring for a father who is seriously ill and waiting for a bone marrow transplant. His estranged brother is a compatible donor, so Anita decides to intervene.
In a large country home, the sickly owner, Emma Blank, is cared for by the household staff. Despite her desperate need for loving care, Emma is a steely tyrant whose demands become ever more cruel and absurd, to the point that she drives everyone to madness. That is, until the day it is discovere...
Antonina, an artist from Saint Petersburg, follows her husband, a political prisoner, to the deep north province of Russia. She starts teaching art in a local school, but she finds herself opposed by a twelve-year-old boy whose brother is a feared local gang leader.