The Oscar-nominated Native American star also will appear in the Hulu series Under the Bridge.
Great news for admirers of Native American star and Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone: You’ll be seeing more of her soon in Fancy Dance, a contemporary drama that premiered to critical acclaim at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Apple Original Films — the same outfit behind Killers of the Flower Moon — has obtained global distribution rights to the movie, which has Gladstone leading a cast that also includes Isabel Deroy-Olson (pictured above with Gladstone), Shea Whigham (Lawmen: Bass Reeves), Ryan Begay (Dark Winds), Crystle Lightning (Diggstown) and Audrey Wasilewski (Alice’s Wonderland Bakery). But wait, there's more: Gladstone also stars in Under the Bridge, a limited run series produced for Hulu and scheduled to premiere later this month.
Fancy Dance will open June 21 in limited theatrical release, and June 28 on Apple TV+. Under the Bridge premieres with two episodes on April 17, with subsequent episodes airing weekly.
What’s Fancy Dance all about? According to Apple:
“Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Gladstone) has cared for her niece, Roki (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 (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 at the mercy of a failed justice system.”
Fancy Dance marks the feature directorial debut for Erica Tremblay, who wrote and directed episodes of Reservation Dogs, and co-wrote and produced this movie. “Our film… has found the perfect home with Apple,” Tremblay said in a prepared statement, “and I am thrilled to share this beautiful story of two Seneca-Cayuga women with a global audience. As a Native American filmmaker, seeing my community included in the rich tapestry of cinema is a dream come true.”
When Fancy Dance was shown at Sundance, Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Cloaking a family drama in crime-film conventions, the plot of Native American filmmaker Erica Tremblay’s exceptional directorial debut concerns a young woman’s disappearance from an Oklahoma reservation and her family’s urgent attempts to locate her. At the same time, Fancy Dance presents a broader narrative that emphasizes the connections that sustain families, communities and tribal nations, even when confronted with a legacy of disenfranchisement. Tremblay’s film validates the varied expressions of that experience with an affirming account of resilience and hope that sparkles with authentic performances, sensitive scripting and a genuine sense of place that resonate well after the final credits roll.”
Tomris Laffly of Harper’s Bazaar added: “Both a shrewd familial drama and a slow-burning road film with the cinematic taste of a crime-thriller, Native American filmmaker Erica Tremblay’s bold and confident debut Fancy Dance immediately cements her as a brand-new Debra Granik or Taylor Sheridan, with an assured voice entirely her own. Led by the always great Lily Gladstone in career-best form and the relative newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson in a startlingly nuanced performance, Tremblay’s refined film reflects on the hardships and violence that Indigenous communities face, and the reserves of perseverance and cultural pride they hold onto as a form of resistance. Resolute, heart-wrenching and ultimately affectionate, Fancy Dance wisely reaches truths both historical and contemporary through a present-day study of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) epidemic.”
When Gladstone accepted the Performance Award for Killers of the Flower Moon at the IndieWire Honors last December, she used her speech to also promote Fancy Dance — which, at the time, had not yet acquired distribution.
While grateful for the acknowledgement of performance in Martin Scorsese’s epic drama, she referred to her performance as Jax as “the absolute highlight of my career, 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. The greatest love story that I’ve ever told in my career. 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,” Gladstone added, celebrating her guests at the event, co-star Isabel Deroy-Olson and director Erica Tremblay.
Here is a video of Lily Gladstone and other creative talents involved with Fancy Dance interviewed at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Lily Gladstone also stars in Under the Bridge, a limited-run series scheduled to premiere April 17 on Hulu. It’s based on acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey’s book about the 1997 true story of 14-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) who went to join friends at a party and never returned home. Through the eyes of Godfrey (Riley Keough) and a local police officer (Gladstone), the series takes us into the hidden world of the young girls accused of the murder — revealing startling truths about the unlikely killer.
According to the showbiz website Deadline: “Gladstone portrays Cam Bentland. As one of the only women of color on the police force in Victoria, BC, Cam is used to disguising herself as ‘one of the boys.’ She is deeply moralistic and a hard worker, and has a strong faith in the justice system she was raised in — even as she has witnessed firsthand how it never serves people like herself. Over the course of the series, Cam is forced to confront her own repression around her queer sexuality and identity, and begins to question the status quo in her line of work — leading her to rise above to do the job the way she believes it should be done.”
The supporting cast includes Chloe Guidry, Javon “Wanna” Walton, Izzy G., Aiyana Goodfellow, Ezra Faroque Khan, and Archie Panjabi.
