2023 SXSW Film Festival Audience Award nominee and Sundance Film Festival 2023 Grand Jury Prize nominee, “Fancy Dance” is the directorial debut of Erica Tremblay and stars Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson and Shea Whigham.
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 Jax losing custody to Roki’s grandfather, 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 colonised world while at the mercy of a failed justice system.
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.