The 32nd annual Philadelphia Film Festival runs October 19-29, 2023 and features over 80 feature films (and numerous shorts!) from over 25 countries. Most films play twice and our own Justin Nordell will be sharing “Philly Film Fest Fast Reviews” to give you a taste of the festival so you can pick and choose which films to make for the second screenings!
Stories about First Nations and Native American persons TOLD BY indigenous filmmakers and actors is unfortunately still such a rarity in film. It’s for this reason that when a movie as exceptional as Erica Tremblay’s feature directorial debut Fancy Dance comes along that it feels like an authenticity rarely captured.
Fancy Dance introduces us to Jax (Lily Gladstone, future Oscar nominee for Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters now) a queer indigenous woman caring for her niece after her sister Tawi’s sudden disappearance just a few weeks ago. Spending her nights searching for her sibling and her days trying to provide optimism for her niece that she never had growing up, Jax is burning the candle at both ends simply by trying their best. Meanwhile niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson, Amazon Prime’s Three Pines) believes that her mom has just taken off like she’s done many times before, and prepares for the annual powwow where she and Tawi are the reigning mother daughter dance champions. After it looks less and less likely that Tawi will ever return, child protective services get involved and move Roki in with her absentee father due to Jax’s past arrest record. Wanting to keep the hope alive, Jax decides to steal her niece back (and dad’s car) to get Roki to the powwow to perform her titular Fancy Dance that she’s worked so hard on.
The epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women THROUGHOUT NORTH AMERICA is issue enough to warrant a narrative this special, but Fancy Dance even moreso is one of the most lived in aunt/niece relationships that I have ever seen in cinema. This film is a document of hope for the thousands of still missing indigenous women, keeping language alive, and a celebration of indigenous lives lived and lost… and that deserves to be seen.
Grade: A-
Catch it at PFF23: Wednesday, October 25th at 1:15pm at the Bourse
Tickets availble here.
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