Lily Gladstone‘s “Fancy Dance” is finally set to debut to a wide audience.
After Gladstone championed the indie film at the 2023 IndieWire Honors, the feature was acquired by Apple Original Films. Erica Tremblay co-wrote and directed “Fancy Dance,” which follows Jax (Gladstone) and her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Jax is searching for her sister, Roki’s mother, after Roki’s grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham) has filed to take custody in her absence. Jax and Roki embark on a roadtrip to find Roki’s mother in time for a powwow. The search becomes a “deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonized world while at the mercy of a failed justice system,” per the film‘s synopsis.
Ryan Begay, Crystle Lightning, and Audrey Wasilewski also star.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” Oscar nominee Gladstone executive produced the film along with Forest Whitaker, Bird Runningwater, and Charlotte Koh. Deidre Backs, Heather Rae, Nina Yang Bongiovi, Tommy Oliver, and writer/director Tremblay produce.
Tremblay co-wrote the script with Miciana Alise. “Fancy Dance” is a Confluential Films and Significant Productions/AUM Group production.
Tremblay penned an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter about the frustrations in finding a distributor for the feature.
“As first-time indie filmmakers, we were under absolutely no illusion that ‘Fancy Dance’ would receive the same kind of industry support as Mr. Scorsese’s juggernaut [‘Killers of the Flower Moon’], but the disparity is so great that it renders our film virtually invisible and leaves only one available perspective: the non-Native one,” Tremblay wrote.
Gladstone, who also serves on the 2024 Cannes jury, called “Fancy Dance” the “absolute highlight” of her career during IndieWire Honors.
“[It is] the best work I feel like I’ve ever done, the most important story, elevating the awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women, missing and murdered sisters, working with the greatest, most visionary, most committed director of my life, working with somebody who I love very dearly and had the best chemistry I’ve had with somebody onscreen,” Gladstone said. “This performance is in a film that currently has no distribution. You all thought I was talking about the other movie, didn’t you? I want to highlight my ‘Fancy Dance’ girls. Back when we premiered at Sundance, IndieWire named [‘Fancy Dance’] one of the 17 films most likely to sell big. Here we are in December and still nothing. Everything I’ve heard from everybody who’s been lucky enough to catch ‘Fancy Dance’ at a festival, who follows the independent circuit […] they have all said it gives them what was missing from ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ the matriarchal, the matrilineal love story, the way that we give everything for our women. We give everything for our nieces, our sisters, our aunties. They feel — whatever void leaving the theater that was left by this horrendous story of the Osage reign of terror, following a survivor of it — if they’ve been lucky enough to see ‘Fancy Dance,’ they feel that it satiated that need.”
“Fancy Dance” premieres in select theaters June 21 and will stream on Apple TV+ June 28. Check out the trailer below.
