Erica Tremblay’s Sundance film Fancy Dance has been picked up by Apple Studios following its debut at this year’s festival last month.
The film stars Lily Gladstone, hot off Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (now streaming on AppleTV+) for which she has just been nominated for the Academy Award.
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 losing custody to Jax’s father, 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 colonized world and at the mercy of a failed justice system. Gladstone stars alongside Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay, Shea Whigham, Crystle Lightning and Audrey Wasilewski.
The film was directed by Erica Tremblay, who was also a screenwriter alongside Miciana Alise.
Apple is planning a cinema run later this year followed by a release on their streaming service afterwards.
