Films of the American South
While searching for films about the South to recommend to someone, I found this list of films from a course schedule. Having read the list, I think I'd sort the films into four subcategories: Appalachia, Deep South, Louisiana, and Texas. Louisiana in particular has enough French Catholic character to merit exclusion from "that Southern thing."

One film that's missing from the list is Maggie Greenwald's Songcatcher. It's not a great film, but it's commendable nonetheless in part because it shows the connections between Scotch-Irish and Appalachian folksongs and also because it's also the only film I know that has a musicologist as a protagonist.