Get ready for the year of Lily Gladstone. We’ve been saying it a lot, due to her blowing up for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and the upcoming film Fancy Dance which we saw and loved from Sundance. But Gladstone has another one coming up, The Unknown Country, which debuted at SXSW in 2022 and finally hits theaters next month.
The film is written and directed by Morrisa Maltz, with Gladstone sharing a story credit and starring as Tana, a Native American woman recovering from tragedy by taking a cross-country journey for the soul.
Here’s the synopsis: Reeling from a devastating loss, Tana (Lily Gladstone) is pulled back into the world by an unexpected invitation to her cousin’s wedding. She packs up her late grandmother’s Cadillac and hits the open road, driving from her home in Minnesota to South Dakota. After reconnecting with her Oglala Lakota family, Tana sets off to retrace a surreal journey that her grandmother took decades ago, searching for the spot captured in an old family photograph. As she travels, Tana finds connection in the stories of everyday people who’ve settled down far off the main roads including Isaac (Raymond Lee), who provides a pivotal clue to understanding the lost location that could cultivate closure. A personal reverie summoned from a beguiling mix of fact and fiction, THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY is an arresting debut feature from Morrisa Maltz.
Also in the cast are Raymond Lee and Richard Ray Whitman.
The Unknown Country opens July 28th at the Quad NYC and Nuart in Los Angeles. Hopefully, it will expand from there.
