Directors Riley Keough, Gina Gammell connect with Indigenous people to bring Pine Ridge Reservation To Un Certain Regard showcase
By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
CANNES, France (AP) --South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation has often been depicted in film but rarely from the inside. The Cannes Film Festival entry "War Pony," though, sought to capture daily life on the reservation by relying on the perspectives of its Native American residents.
The film was directed by the actor Riley Keough and her friend, Gina Gammell. They both reside in Los Angeles. But while shooting Andrea Arnold's 2016 film "American Honey" across the U.S. heartland, Keough shared a scene with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, two young Lakota men from Pine Ridge without any previous acting experience whom Arnold had enlisted as extras.
"We just got stuck in a motel room together for four hours," Keough, the "Zola" and "The Girlfriend Experience" actor, recalled in an interview in Cannes. "Our scene was moved so we were just sitting there drinking beer."
"She was the star there so I was like, 'OK, cool.' Just on set drinking," says Sioux Bob, smiling. "I got paid $2,000 for, like, two hours of my time, so I'm not mad at it."
But what began an unlikely friendship — and eventually collaboration — would stretch over the next seven years. Keough and Gammell would visit Pine Ridge and, later, Sioux Bob and Reddy would travel out to Los Angeles. Hanging out and making Snapchat videos eventually morphed into a screenplay written by Sioux Bob and Reddy.
From such modest beginnings and a lot of just sitting around drinking, "War Pony" emerged as not just an accomplished portrait of life on Pine Ridge but an enthusiastically received Cannes premiere in the festival's Un Certain Regard section.
"It's so wild," Keough says, laughing and shaking her head in disbelief. "Every time I look at Frank and Gina, I'm like, 'What?' We know how we started and how far we've come."
"War Pony" follows a pair of protagonists. One is Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), a laconic 23-year-old who manages to get by hustling small jobs and who lands a gig with a nearby wealthy white rancher who profits and plunders from the reservation in various ways. The other is Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder), a 12-year-old with a drug-dealing father. A series of loose-jointed, interconnected episodes follow that are both comic (a potentially lucrative poodle plays a co-staring role) and tragic.
The stories came straight from Reddy, Sioux Bob and others who drew from their own memories and experiences on the reservation. It was shot on the streets many of the actors live on.
"It wasn't too hard to keep it authentic," says Sioux Bob. "We're all first-time actors. It's Pine Ridge. This is your life. All this outlandish stuff you see in the movie, that was Tuesday."
"War Pony," which is seeking distribution in Cannes, features a cast mostly populated by Oglala Lakota and Sicangu Lakota citizens of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Rosebud Sioux Tribe. A key figure was producer Willi White, a tribal citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who has striven to bring more authentic depictions of Indigenous people to movie screens.
"Pine Ridge is really unique," says Sioux Bob. "It's really beautiful but it's so chaotic. That's what I wanted everyone to see. This isn't just my reservation. All reservations are in rural areas like this and there are probably groups of kids doing the same things. And I wanted it to be showcased. That's the reality."
In coming to Cannes, many among the cast and filmmakers were making their first overseas trip. The young Crazy Thunder hadn't heard of Cannes before. But the experience of making "War Pony" — grittily realistic, ultimately triumphant — and seeing his home honestly reflected on screen has inspired him.
"You want to go out and find more resources and reach for a different opportunity, reach for higher," says Crazy Thunder.
That films are ultimately authored by one person, the "auteur," is common belief at the Cannes Film Festival. But the community effort of "War Pony" challenges that notion.
"A lot of people made this film," says Keough.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More