FANCY DANCE (2023)

Lily Gladstone stars in queer filmmaker Erica Tremblay’s drama FANCY DANCE, streaming now on Apple TV +

FANCY DANCE

2023. USA.

 Director: Erica Tremblay

Screenplay: Erica Tremblay & Miciana Alise

Starring: Lily Gladstone, Isabel DeRoy-Olson, Shea Whigham, Audrey Wasilewski & Crystle Lightning.

FANCY DANCE is set in Oklahoma on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation and follows Jax (Gladstone), a queer woman who is looking after her thirteen-year-old niece Roki (DeRoy-Olson) while attempting to locate her sister, Tawi. Tawi has been missing for nearly two-weeks and neither the police nor the FBI have been taking Jax’s calls seriously. To protect Roki from considering the worst, Jax encourages her to prepare for the upcoming powwow where she tells her she will dance, and be reunited, with her mother.

The film reflects reservation life through the experience of its writers, Tremblay and Miciana Alise, who also shed light on the very real ongoing issue of missing and m-rdered Indigenous women. In an interview with Outfest in 2023, Tremblay spoke of the importance of avoiding tropes typically seen in films about Indigenous people and how they navigated the darkness of the film’s themes by balancing them with depictions of the strong bonds of family and community on the reservation.

Avoiding tropes was also important in the queer elements of the film, Tremblay stated that “we wanted Jax’s queerness to not be the source of any specific struggle or the source of any specific trauma and that her being queer was just a part of her, like being native is a part of her, like being a hustler is part of her, like being a loving aunt.”

FANCY DANCE premiered at Sundance in 2023, garnering positive reviews from both critics and audiences alike and is streaming now on Apple TV+