I’m posting this just because I know it’ll make our writer Cortland Jacoby very happy, as she has been saying since last year’s Sundance that Fancy Dance was Lily Gladstone’s best movie of 2023. Well, after going this long without distribution, the film has landed at Apple, which happens to be the home of Killers of the Flower Moon, which made her an Oscar nominee for Best Actress.
Fancy Dance is the directorial debut of filmmaker Erica Tremblay, whom Cortland spoke with at Sundance following its world premiere. The film stars Gladstone alongside Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay, Shea Whigham, Crystle Lightning and Audrey Wasilewski.
Apple has global rights and plans a theatrical release followed by Apple TV+ streaming later this year.
Here’s the synopsis: 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 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. 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 and at the mercy of a failed justice system.
You can check out Cortland’s review of Fancy Dance here.
