In the fourth episode of the Sundance 2023 podcast season, we discuss the North American films by and about Indigenous Peoples at the festival, including Twice Colonized, Bad Press, Murder in Big Horn, and Fancy Dance.
Click here to read the episode show notes.
You will also find an AI-generated transcript in the show notes. 
00:00 Introduction 01:05 Why are we discussing Indigenous films at Sundance? 14:11 Fancy Dance is our favourite Indigenous film at Sundance 14:54 Murder in Big Horn 31:00 Twice Colonized 41:13 Bad Press 49:26 The trend of an Indigenous filmmaker and a settler filmmaker co-directing 57:58 Indigenous films at Sundance set outside of North America: Heroic, Sorcery, Against the Tide More about the episode In this episode, we discuss Indigenous Films at Sundance: films directed or co-directed by Indigenous people as well as a couple of films about Indigenous people but directed by settlers. We kick off with our favourite Indigenous film at the festival, Fancy Dance, about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) which we already went deep on in episode 3.
We then dig into the disappointing documentary miniseries Murder in Big Horn (dir. Razelle Benally who is Oglala Lakota/Diné and Matthew Galkin), which looks at MMIWG in the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Nations. The Sundance miniseries Murder in Big Horn is told through the lens of an Indigenous investigative journalist looking into the case and uses the tropes of true crime. We talk about the often thoughtful but inchoate Twice Colonized, which was directed by a settler The film Twice Colonized follows the wonderful Inuk lawyer Aaju Peter (who also appears in Angry Inuk).
Next, we talk briefly about another disappointing Sundance US Indigenous film, a documentary co-directed by an Indigenous director, Bad Press (dir. Muscogee filmmaker Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler), about the Mvskoke Media in the Muscogee Creek Nation navigating gaining and then losing and then trying to regain their status as free press. We also touch briefly on Fox Maxy's New Frontiers experimental film.
Finally, we briefly discuss Heroic, a World Dramatic Competition film about an Indigenous character and mention the other World Cinema films that are about (but not made by) Indigenous people.
About the Sundance 2023 season This is the fourth episode of our new podcast season on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Sundance 2023 runs from January 19-28, and we'll be covering this year's festival in a new podcast season about the films this year and how the programming fits into the festival's history. This is Seventh Row's second podcast season (the first was on Women at Cannes in 2022).
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Show Notes About the Sundance 2023 season This is the thid episode of our new podcast season on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Sundance 2023 runs from January 19-28, and we'll be covering this year's festival in a new podcast season about the films this year and how the programming fits into the festival's history. This is Seventh Row's second podcast season (the first was on Women at Cannes in 2022).
Sundance 2023 Bingo
Because the festival loves to program films by