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Priamo Gregory
So, Indigenous moviemakers have been working for decades in the independent film world to tell their stories. But over the past few years, the number of movies and television shows with a strong Indigenous presence both in front of and behind the camera has been rapidly growing. And Native creatives based in or hailing from Oklahoma are playing key roles in many of the hot new titles.
One of the most critically acclaimed shows out now follows four Native teenagers in rural Oklahoma, while the most popular title ever on one major streaming service is a long-running film franchise's latest installment, which features an Indigenous heroine.
Filmed primarily in Oklahoma, the FX Networks hit debuted in 2021 to almost universal acclaim and premiered its sophomore season last year to more high praise. It has blazed trails as the first mainstream TV show on which every writer, director and series regular performer is Indigenous.
Co-created and executive produced by Oscar-winning New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi ("Thor: Love and Thunder"), who is of Maori ancestry, and Tulsa-based moviemaker Sterlin Harjo ("Barking Water"), who is Seminole and Muscogee, the bawdy and uproarious coming-of-age comedy focuses on four present-day Native teenagers who set out to escape their rural Oklahoma home for sunny California.
The long-awaited big-budget series based on Oklahoma-born and bred novelist Tony Hillerman's best-selling mystery novels about fictional Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee debuted in summer 2022. The series was created by Chickasaw Nation citizen and Ardmore native Graham Roland.
With Cheyenne-Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre (best known for the groundbreaking 1998 indie film "Smoke Signals") directing many of its episodes, the series counts film icon Robert Redford and "Game of Thrones" mastermind George R.R. Martin among its executive producers, along with Roland.
Set in the 1970s, the series stars Lakota actor Zahn McClarnon ("Reservation Dogs") as Leaphorn and Hualapai actor Kiowa Gordon ("The Twilight Saga") as Chee. The six-episode first season made a powerful enough impression that the show was quickly renewed for a second.
The show centers on the lifelong friendship between Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms, "The Office"), a descendant of the titular town's white founding family, and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding, who is Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux and now has a hilarious recurring role on "Reservation Dogs"), the head of the cultural center for the fictional Minishonka Nation.
The latest installment in the long-running "Predator" sci-fi film franchise is set in the Northern Great Plains of the Comanche Nation in 1719. Filmed in the Stoney Nakoda Nation near Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with a largely Indigenous cast, the prequel pits one of the now-iconic alien trophy hunters against Naru (Amber Midthunder, "The Ice Road"), a Comanche woman determined to prove herself as a warrior.
Soon after the movie premiered in July 2022, 20th Century Studios revealed that the action-thriller, which earned strong reviews, scored the biggest premiere on the Disney-owned streamer to date, topping all film and TV series debuts. Based on hours watched in the first three days of its release, "Prey" also marked the most-watched film premiere on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ under the Star Banner in all other territories, according to a news release.
Disney and Trachtenberg recently confirmed that "Prey" is the rare streaming-only movie to get a physical media release. It was unleashed Oct. 3 on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD. According to Slash Film, the Blu-ray release includes the Comanche audio track as well as two hours of bonus features, including a making-of featurette, panel discussion, alternative opening sequence, deleted scenes and audio commentary.
Filmed in Oklahoma in early 2020, the crime drama marks the feature film debut of Native American writer-director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians) and made its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Chickasaw Nation Productions spent years turning the epic life of the titular Chickasaw Rancher, Montford Johnson, into a biopic that spans from his birth in 1843, through the tumultuous years of the Civil War and its aftermath and on to the Land Run of 1889.
The son of an Englishman and a Chickasaw woman, Johnson (Martin Sensmeier, who is Tlingit and Koyukon-Athabascan) befriended Cherokee fur trader and merchant Jesse Chisholm (Chickasaw citizen Eddie Easterling), who convinced him to establish cattle ranches and trading posts in the newly created Indian Territory to serve his fellow First Americans. At the height of his ranching operations, Johnson accumulated a herd of more than 35,000 head of cattle grazing over a million acres.
Marvel Studios leaps into Native storytelling with this new series, with all five episodes set to debut Jan. 10, 2024, on both Disney+ and Hulu. They'll be available on Hulu until April 9. "Echo" also marks the first Marvel Studios series to drop all episodes at once for maximum binge-watching.
As part of the "Hawkeye" series, Native actress Alaqua Cox, who is Menominee and Mohican, was introduced in late 2021 in the role of Maya Lopez/Echo, the fearsome commander of the criminal organization the Tracksuit Mafia.
Although it was filmed in Georgia, the show also is a milestone for Oklahoma: Maya is depicted as Choctaw, and much of the series' action is set in her small-hometown in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. When Yellow Bird learned three years later that a young, white oil worker had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became concerned.
The book (and presumably the intended series) chronicles her obsessive search for clues, which takes her on two divergent paths: to her own tribe, altered by oil-boom wealth, and to the non-Native, down-on-their-luck oilmen, including many who traveled hundreds of miles to find work toward the end of the Great Recession.
While attending the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, Indian film director Karan Johar discussed the growing popularity of Bollywood productions in North America. He told BNN Bloomberg, "I think, in the last decade, we've seen a huge, exponential advancement of our numbers...When we read those numbers for our films, we know that the reach is wide, it's gone beyond the diaspora, it's also now penetrating into international audiences."
As it turns out, streaming platforms have played a major role in the rising trend of Bollywood movies, now that audiences can enjoy them from home. And since I've already introduced you to the most compelling Hindi-language films on Prime Video, I'm turning my attention to the best Hindi movies on Netflix. From mind-bending mystery thrillers (like Badla) to feel-good musical romances (like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), keep reading for 20 must-watch Hindi titles to stream on Netflix.
Years after Maya, a single mom, escapes from her abusive husband, Ajit, she's forced to confront him again when he finally tracks them down. Desperate to protect her daughter, Maya murders Ajit and enlists the help of her neighbor to cover it up. Fun fact: This gripping thriller broke a streaming record on Netflix, becoming the most-watched non-English movie on the streaming service worldwide during its opening week. NBD.
Easily one of the best Hindi movies on Netflix, Dil Chahta Hai follows the lives of three tight-knit friends with vastly different personalities. As they all mature, each tries to pursue a romantic relationship, but this unfortunately causes tension between them. The film features honest, realistic portrayals of youth, and it will have you laughing from start to finish. (FYI, the storyline was inspired by Akhtar's diary, where he documented his trips to Mumbai and New York City.)
When Kabir Dewan, an architect, gets engaged to his girlfriend, he plans a three-week-long bachelor road trip to Spain with two of his childhood friends. However, one of them is a workaholic who can't seem to unplug, and the other has secret plans to find his biological father, resulting in a bit of tension between the trio. Add this to your queue if you need a funny, feel-good flick that tackles messy friendships.
Loved Anatomy of a Fall? Allow me to introduce your next obsession. In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, Rishabh gets killed in an explosion at his home, and when the cops investigate, they conclude that he was murdered. His wife, Rani, becomes the prime suspect. But as she opens up about their troubled marriage, the police find it harder to get to the truth of what happened.
Set during the Sri Lankan Civil War, this intense political thriller follows an Indian Army Special Forces officer who travels to the war-torn coastal island to disrupt a rebel group. When he arrives, he crosses paths with a British journalist who's determined to expose the truth about the civil war, and he learns about a conspiracy to assassinate the former Indian prime minister.
Vijay Salgaonkar's cozy, simple life is turned upside down when his adopted daughter, Anju gets blackmailed by the son of the Inspector General. When Anju accidentally kills him in an act of self-defense, Vijay must protect his family from the scary side of the law.
Calling all hopeless romantics! This sweet story revolves around 8-year-old Anjali, who, after losing her mother, embarks on a mission to reunite her widowed father with his college best friend (and Anjali's namesake), who was once in love with him.
Khan stars as Mohan Bhargava, a NASA scientist who returns to India to take his old nanny to the U.S. During his visit, however, Mohan learns more about his Indian heritage and discovers that his skills would be far more useful in his own country. When he also meets and falls for a kind schoolteacher, he starts to reconsider whether he should return to America.
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