Indigenous Films
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- DirectorJeff BarnabyStarsDevery JacobsGlen GouldBrandon OakesRed Crow Mi'kmaq reservation, 1976: By government decree, every Indian child under the age of 16 must attend residential school. In the kingdom of the Crow, that means imprisonment at St. Dymphna's. That means being at the mercy of "Popper", the sadistic Indian agent who runs the school.
- DirectorCatherine BainbridgeAlfonso MaioranaStarsGeorge ClintonRobbie RobertsonGary GiddinsA documentary about the role of Native Americans in popular music history.
- DirectorNeil DiamondCatherine BainbridgeJeremiah HayesStarsAdam BeachChris EyreRussell MeansThe history of the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films.
- DirectorMichael AptedStarsVal KilmerSam ShepardGraham GreeneA young mixed-blood FBI agent is assigned to work with a cynical veteran investigator on a murder on a poverty-stricken Sioux reservation.
- DirectorMark CellettiDocuments the annual Tribal Journey event of Pacific Northwest Cedar Canoe nations. The resurgence of the cedar canoe societies have carved a new way of healing through tradition.
- DirectorGwaai EdenshawHelen Haig-BrownStarsWilly RussAdeana YoungBrandon KallioWhen a man accidentally causes the death of the son of his best friend, the man is wracked by grief and runs off into the woods.
- StarsCandy PalmaterSue BeattieWhang-OdTattoo is an ancient art not relegated to one continent or one people. The producers travel around the world to seek out and learn how ancient tribal rites are carried into today as part of a tattoo culture that lets people know of their heritage. Each episode focuses on a particular part of the world and the people practicing this unique art which expresses ones true ancient art.
- DirectorMichelle LatimerStarsAlethea Arnaquq-BarilNyla InnuksukThomas KingThis searing adaptation of Thomas King's bestselling book explores the cultural colonization of Indigenous peoples in North America.
- DirectorAmanda KernellStarsMaj-Doris RimpiOlle SarriÁnne Biret SombyA reindeer-breeding Sámi girl who is exposed to the racism of the 1930's at her boarding school, starts dreaming of another life. But to achieve it, she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.
- DirectorStephen S. CampanelliStarsAjuawak KapashesitWayne BakerSladen PeltierFollows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism.
- DirectorKevin CostnerStarsKevin CostnerMary McDonnellGraham GreeneLieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote western Civil War outpost, finds himself engaging with a neighbouring Sioux settlement, causing him to question his own purpose.
- DirectorChris EyreStarsAdam BeachEvan AdamsIrene BedardArnold rescued Thomas from a fire when he was a child. Thomas thinks of Arnold as a hero, while Arnold's son Victor resents his father's alcoholism, violence and abandonment of his family.
- DirectorPhillip NoyceStarsEverlyn SampiTianna SansburyKenneth BranaghIn 1931, three half-white, half-Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their houses to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a journey across the Outback.
- CreatorTony ElliottMichelle LatimerStarsJoel OuletteCrystle LightningKalani QueypoJared is an Indigenous teen struggling to keep his dysfunctional family above water. When he starts seeing strange things - talking ravens, doppelgängers, skin monsters - his already chaotic life is turned upside down.
- DirectorJonathan WacksStarsGary FarmerA MartinezJoanelle RomeroTwo Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage.
- DirectorSusanna WhiteStarsJessica ChastainLouisa KrauseBoots SoutherlandCatherine Weldon, a portrait painter from 1890s Brooklyn, travels to Dakota to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull and becomes embroiled in the Lakota peoples' struggle over the rights to their land.
- CreatorElwood ReidStarsDavid ThewlisMarcia Gay HardenAneurin BarnardBased on the novel by Pulitzer-winner Annie Proulx, BARKSKINS follows a disparate group of outcasts who must navigate brutal hardships, competing interests, and tangled loyalties at the crossroads of civilization- late 1600s New France.
- DirectorTaylor SheridanStarsElizabeth OlsenJeremy RennerGraham GreeneA wildlife officer, who is haunted by a tragedy that happened because of him, teams up with an FBI agent in solving a murder of a young woman on a Wyoming Native American reservation and hopes to get redemption from his past regrets.
- StarsSarain FoxGitz CrazyboyIphy MurphyVice travels to Indigenous communities across the Americas to meet people protecting their homelands and rising up against colonization.
- DirectorJeff BarnabyStarsMichael GreyeyesElle-Máijá TailfeathersForrest GoodluckThe dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi'kmaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.
- DirectorAlethea Arnaquq-BarilStarsAlethea Arnaquq-BarilAaju PeterAn Inuk filmmaker takes a close look at the central role of seal hunting in the lives of the Inuit, the importance of the revenue they earn from sales of seal skins, and the negative impact that international campaigns against the seal hunt have had on their lives.
- DirectorKathleen HepburnElle-Máijá TailfeathersStarsViolet NelsonElle-Máijá TailfeathersCharlie HannahAfter a chance encounter on the street, a woman tries to encourage a pregnant domestic abuse victim to seek help.
- DirectorMark Kenneth WoodsMichael YerxaStarsJack AnawakAlethea Arnaquq-BarilAllison BrewerNot the only gay 'Eskimo'.
- DirectorKristen LappasTom Rinaldi
- DirectorDon FeatherstoneStarsMichelle TorresBob MazaKevin SmithRole reversal study of the historically inaccurate "plight" of Australian Aborigines in modern Anglo-Saxon society. Indigenous "whities" [sic] are being persecuted by racist black people who invaded the fictitious country of BabaKiueria. Politically incorrect and inconvenient facts about infant mortality rates are ignored by a "reporter" who lives with a typical white family in a white "ghetto" for six months.
- DirectorAmanda StrongAccompanied by a 10,000-year-old shape-shifter and friend known as Sabe, Biidaaban sets out on a mission to reclaim the ceremonial harvesting of sap from maple trees in an unwelcoming suburban neighbourhood in Ontario.
- DirectorAnita DoronStarsJoel EvansKiowa GordonChloe RoseA drama centered on a First Nations teenager trying to find his place in the modern world.
- DirectorRyszard BugajskiStarsRon LeaGraham GreeneMichael HoganA white lawyer finds his values shaken when he is paired with an angry Indigenous activist who insists on kidnapping the head of a logging company to teach him the price of his destruction.
- DirectorHepi MitaStarsAwatea MitaEruera 'Bob' MitaHepi MitaDocumentary portrait of pioneering filmmaker and mother Merata Mita, detailing how her filmmaking intersected with the lives of her children and indigenous filmmakers globally, and featuring rare archival footage dating back to 1977.
- DirectorWayne BlairStarsBrooklyn DoomadgeeHelena JohnsonDan CollinsLauren and Ned, in love and engaged, have just ten days to find Lauren's mother who has gone AWOL somewhere in the remote far north of Australia, reunite her parents, and pull off their dream wedding.
- DirectorJeffrey PalmerStarsRilla AskewBeau BridgesJeff BridgesWords from a Bear examines the enigmatic life and mind of Pulitzer Prize winning author, Navarro Scott Momaday. This profile delves into the psyche behind one of Native America's most celebrated authors of poetry and prose. Words from a Bear visually captures the essence of Momaday's writings, relating each written line to his unique Kiowa/American experience representing ancestry, place, and oral history. Words from a Bear is a fresh and distinctive approach to biographical storytelling. Cinematically, this story takes audiences on a spiritual journey through the expansive landscapes of the West, when Momaday's Kiowa ancestry roamed the Great Plains with herds of buffalo, to the sand-painted valleys of Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico where his imagination ripened and he showed superior writing skills as a young mission student. The biography will give a thorough survey of Momaday's most prolific years as a doctorate fellow at Stanford University, his achievement of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1969, and his later works that solidified his place as the founding member of the "Native American Renaissance" in art and literature, influencing a generation of Native American artists, scholars, and political activists. Although his unique heritage is a central theme of the narrative, Momaday's work asks the questions every audience can relate to: what are our origins and how do we connect to them through our collective memories? Through his literature and the cinematic visuals, the film will illuminate how Momaday has grappled with these basic questions of human existence and his own identity. The film will reveal the most intimate details of the writer's personal life as revealed through his literary texts, along with the trials and tribulations he faced as a Native American artist in the twentieth and twenty first century. Historical photos, original animation, and stunning aerials of landscapes, will complement captivating interviews with Robert Redford, Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, James Earle Jones, and Joy Harjo, to bring audiences inside the creative core of this American Master.
- DirectorEva KaukaiEva Kaukai and Manon Chamberland practice the art of throat singing in the small village of Kangirsuk, in their native Canadian Arctic land. Interspliced with footage of the area throughout the four seasons of Kangirsuk by a cinematographer Johnny Nassak.
- DirectorShelley NiroStarsMorningstar AngelineAndrew MartinAjuawak KapashesitMitzi Bearclaw is an indigenous woman who reluctantly returns to her isolated reserve to help her father care for her bitter mother.
- DirectorKlee BenallyStarsJim AndersBelinda AyzeLyncia BegayHalee (Nezbahe Williams) is a 16 year old Diné relocation refugee who uses poetry to escape from her painful past and present.
- DirectorWilliam EigenStarsS'Nya Sanchez-HohensteinChaske SpencerStacey ThunderJohn Red Elk hears from his relatives down in Minneapolis that his Uncle Norton is dead and vows to go to the big city to find out what really happened to him. At its heart, "The Jingle Dress" is a contemporary story of a Native American family that moves from their rural home on the reservation in northern Minnesota to the faster paced urban environment of Minneapolis. We follow the Red Elk family as they experience city culture through their unvarnished perspective, as well as gain insight into their Indigenous culture and traditions.
- DirectorDan GirmusOYATE is an observational nonfiction feature film about life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. The film follows two families on Pine Ridge as they go about their daily activities over the course of a single summer. They attend rodeos, shoot clay pigeons, and participate in pow wows. Family members get married, have children, and celebrate the 4th of July. All the while, the difficult, often intractable realities of modern reservation life threaten to encroach upon them.
- DirectorHaroula RoseStarsKenadi DelaCernaJohn AshtonTatanka MeansMargo Crane's odyssey on the Stark River introduces her to a world filled with wonders and dangers.
- DirectorDeborah AndersonStarsDelacina Chief EagleRita CoolidgeBryan DeansThe Lakota women living on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, are rising up against the forces that continue to suppress them. By preserving and protecting their ancestral values and wisdom, they provide hope to their people.
- DirectorClement GuerraSophie GuerraStarsCasey Camp-HorinekPatricia GualingaMelina Laboucan-MassimoFour Indigenous leaders embark on an extraordinary trans-continental adventure from the Canadian plains to deep into the heart of the Amazonian jungle to unite the peoples of North and South America and deepen the meaning of "Climate Justice". Their path through the jungle takes them on an unexpectedly challenging and liberating journey, which will forever change their attachment to the Earth and one another.
- DirectorCarla UlrichStarsEileen BeaverHenry BeaverDavid BurkeFlinch, Bryce, and Rupert have been sent by their Elders to live nine months on the land. There, the young men learn to take responsibility for their actions and acquire the humility required to return home.
- DirectorScott CooperStarsScott ShepherdRosamund PikeAva CooperIn 1892, a legendary Army Captain reluctantly agrees to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory.
- DirectorSterlin HarjoStarsMicah P. HinsonJulia KeefeBobby WilsonFilmmaker Sterlin Harjo follows Native artists for a year as they navigate their careers in the US and abroad. The film explores the immense complexities each artist faces in regards to their own identity as Native artists, as well as pushing further Native art into a post-colonial world.
- DirectorDerrick LamereStarsSherman Alexie76 years after the ceremony of tears, the 6 tribes of the Upper Columbia return to their traditional waterways by canoe.
- DirectorSanjay RawalStarsKris BergenChucky CarpenterTwila CassadoreAn intimate portrait of a growing movement amongst Indigenous Americans to reclaim their spiritual and cultural identities through food sovereignty.
- DirectorElizabeth CastleChristina D. KingStarsMarcella GilbertMadonna Thunder HawkA documentary which details the life of Lakota activist and community organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk, whose career fighting for Indigenous and women's rights has now spanned over 50 years.
- DirectorJessie AdlerDevastated by her best friend's suicide, a young Lakota woman creates a girls' boxing team with urgent hope that sport, sisterhood and tradition will guide youth toward a safer path.
- DirectorMarie-Hélène CousineauMadeline IvaluStarsMalaya Qaunirq ChapmanMagalie Lépine BlondeauPatrick HivonKuujjuaq, Nunavik 1940s. Surprised at the loss of her innocence, the young Inuk Elsa draws courage from her rugged land to become a woman as strong and independent as the restless river that cuts across it. She becomes the very young mother of a child whose remarkable life breaks with the millennial traditions of her ancestors. Navigating the social norms of the colonizers and the reality of her own family situation, the dreariness of a relationship that is not right for her and the rebellion of her teenage son, Elsa's path follows the winding course of the indomitable river that accompanies her every turn in life.
- DirectorMichael AptedStarsRobert RedfordNorman ZigrossiRobert SikmaThis film describes the events surrounding a 1975 shootout at the Pine Ridge reservation in S. Dakota where two FBI agents were killed.
- DirectorMyron DeweyJosh FoxJames SpioneStarsAutumn DePoe-HughesThe Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota captures world attention through their peaceful resistance against the U.S. government's plan to construct an oil pipeline through their land.
- DirectorDaniel RedenbachJanine WindolphStarsCharity BradfieldDevery JacobsErroll KinistinoIn a remote northern woodland community, a young First Nations mother and her 7-year-old son search for her boyfriend in the wake of his mysterious disappearance.
- DirectorKirsten CarthewStarsDevery JacobsDuane HowardMark AnderakoFilmed at the Arctic Circle, "The Sun at Midnight" tells the story of an unexpected friendship between a hunter obsessed with finding a missing caribou herd and a teenage rebel who gets lost while on the run.
- DirectorAlanis ObomsawinA look at the efforts involved with decolonizing Manitoba's First Nation communities.
- DirectorAlex SmithAndrew J. SmithStarsChaske SpencerDavid MorseGary FarmerVirgil First Raise wakes with a shiner and a hangover in a roadside ditch on the stark but beautiful plains of Montana. As he rises to face the day he sees a vision of his father lying dead at his feet. Impossible-- his father froze to death in a snowdrift years earlier. Virgil returns home to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she's taken his electric razor and his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her-- beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated encounters, sexual skirmishes, and improbable cloak-and-dagger intrigues with the mysterious 'Airplane Man'. Virgil's quest also brings him face-to-face with childhood memories and visions of his beloved, lost brother Mose-- some glorious, some tragic. Only when Virgil seeks the counsel of an old, blind man named Yellow Calf, does he grasp the truth of his origins and begin to thaw the ice in his veins.
- DirectorAdam MazoBen Pender-CudlipA story of stolen children and cultural survival: inside the first truth and reconciliation commission for Native Americans.
- DirectorChris EyreStarsHarrison LoweJames DalgaiAdam BeachThe story revolves around the legend of the skin walkers or "S Dubs", a folk legend from Utah about the spirits of murdered Indians returning to seek revenge upon those who disrespect the land.
- DirectorTom LaughlinStarsTom LaughlinDelores TaylorClark HowatEx-Green Beret hapkido expert saves wild horses from being slaughtered for dog food and helps protect a desert "freedom school" for runaway.
- DirectorFranc RoddamStarsBilly WirthKevin DillonTim SampsonA group of re-enactors attempt to stage a hundred year anniversary battle between US Cavalry and Blackfeet Indians. Unfortunately racial hostilities and a real gun lead to some all too real casualties, and three young Blackfoot men are caught in the middle. The film follows their flight for freedom in the face of an angry community which has mistakenly blamed them for the violence.
- DirectorMartin ScorseseStarsLeonardo DiCaprioRobert De NiroLily GladstoneWhen oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one - until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
- DirectorJosh BooneStarsMaisie WilliamsAnya Taylor-JoyCharlie HeatonFive young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.
- StarsAlaqua CoxChaske SpencerTantoo CardinalMaya Lopez must face her past, reconnect with her Native American roots, and embrace the meaning of family and community if she ever hopes to move forward.