FANCYDANCE

By Erica TREMBLAY

CONFLUENTIAL FILMS - as PROD

LGBT - Completed 2022

Following her sister's disappearance, a Native American hustler kidnaps her niece from the child's white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact.

Festivals
& Awards

Sundance Film Festival 2023
U.S. Dramatic Competition
    • Year of production
    • 2022
    • Genres
    • LGBT, Drama
    • Countries
    • USA
    • Languages
    • ENGLISH
    • Duration
    • 90 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Erica TREMBLAY
    • Synopsis
    • Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has cared for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. At the risk of losing custody to Jax’s father, Frank (Shea Whigham), the pair hit the road and scour the backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow. What begins as a search gradually turns into a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonized world and at the mercy of a failed justice system.

      Fancy Dance announces the arrival of a major directorial talent: Erica Tremblay. Her unflinching exploration of marginalization uses a mystery narrative as a springboard for an oblique coming-of-age story, lovingly and luminously enacted by Gladstone and Deroy-Olson. Tremblay’s juxtaposition of settler violence against the strength of Indigenous communities offers a nuanced account of the human costs of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic and the possibilities of healing for those left behind.