Film: »Fancy Dance«: On the run with my aunt

13-year-old Roki (Isabel DeRoy-Olson) wants nothing more than to take part in the mother-daughter dance with her mother Tawi at the upcoming big powwow in Oklahoma City. Last year, the two dominated this competition, as their aunt Jax (Lily Gladstone) says with a smile. But the “fancy dance” between the two, as the title of this extraordinary independent film is called, is in danger of never even taking place. Tawi has been missing for a few weeks and Roki lives with her aunt Jax in their shared house on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation.

Soon, the youth welfare office shows up at Jax’s home because of the missing mother, who is being intensively sought by the indigenous community, and takes her niece away from the family. The reason is that Jax has had previous convictions for drugs from a long time ago. The 13-year-old is brought to her white grandfather Frank (Shea Whigham), whom she doesn’t actually know and who left the reservation years ago shortly after the death of his indigenous wife, Tawi and Jax’s mother. The authorities, who do not hesitate for a moment when it comes to tearing an indigenous child from his family, are not at all concerned with the search for the missing mother.

In no other population group in the USA and Canada are as many women missing and murdered as in the indigenous communities, which has now led to the founding of the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) movement. In her feature film debut, the New York-based director Erica Tremblay, who is herself a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation, gives an intimate insight into the lives of indigenous women in the “Rez” that has rarely been staged for a general audience, as is the reservation Film is colloquially called.

Jax finally gets together with her niece, who picks her up from her father’s middle-class suburban house at night, and sets off with her to the powwow in Oklahoma City, in the hope of perhaps meeting her sister there. At the same time, she and her brother JJ (Ryan Begay), the village police officer, research the whereabouts of Tawi, who worked as a table dancer and sold drugs on the side. Did she fall victim to a violent crime – or did she simply run away for a while?

The social climate in the reserve is rough, and there is a lot of drug dealing and consumption. Erica Tremblay does not create a romanticized image of indigenous life in the USA. The filmmaker, who previously specialized in documentaries and whose feature film project “Fancy Dance” was supported by several grants at the Sundance Film Festival, paints a sober and minimalist picture.

Erica Tremblay does not create a romanticized image of indigenous life in the USA.

But it is precisely this rather slow and unexaggerated narrative style as well as the careful development of the characters, together with the impressive acting performances, that create the narrative power of this film. »Fancy Dance«, which is laid out like a road movie over long stretches, offers an extremely exciting and at times very entertaining story. Because the strong women Jax and Roki, with a lot of audacity, continually acquire what they need to survive. They steal cars and gas from the gas station, break into a villa that is for sale in order to hide from the police and FBI, who are hunting Jax for allegedly kidnapping her niece. 13-year-old Roki is involved in all of these scams and even has to be stopped by her aunt when she steals from the supermarket.

How precarious their status actually is becomes clear when they are stopped in a parking lot by an ICE immigration officer. “What is your immigration status?” the white police officer asks the Native American women who have to justify why they are out in public.

“Fancy Dance” tells an unspectacular but powerful story about the racist everyday life that indigenous people have to endure in US society. Lily Gladstone shines in her role as a tough, queer, indigenous woman who doesn’t let herself get down and fights for herself and her family without any ifs and buts.

“Fancy Dance” is an idiosyncratic film that defies clear definitions. The 90-minute film is a crime thriller, coming-of-age story, social drama, road movie and story about the breakup of a family that has to deal with the disappearance of a person as well as with the authorities who blindly tear children from families. The series “Little Bird,” which has just appeared on Arte, also deals with this sensitive issue, which has affected many indigenous people in the USA and Canada for decades. Indigenous themes seem to be on the rise in film, as shown by Martin Scorsese’s ten-time Oscar-nominated film “Killer of the Flower Moon.”

»Fancy Dance«, USA 2023. Director: Erica Tremblay; Book: Miciana Alise, Erica Tremblay. Starring: Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay, Shea Whigham. 90 min. From June 28th on Apple TV+