Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day

The 2024 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour is a curated selection of short films that reflects a variety of Native stories and showcases inventive, original storytelling from indigenous artists previously supported by the Sundance Film Festival. This edition features eight short films—both fiction and nonfiction—by indigenous filmmakers from around the globe including Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs) and Sky Hopinka (Malni: Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore). Support for screenings is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Visit The Sundance Institute website to learn more about their support for Indigenous-created stories.

Bay of Herons / U.S.A. (Director: Jared James Lank) — Calling on the strength of his ancestors, a young Mi’kmaq man reflects on the pain of bearing witness to the destruction of his homelands. Fiction.

Winding Path / U.S.A. (Directors: Alexandra Lazarowich, Ross Kauffman, Producer: Robin Honan) — Eastern Shoshone MD-PhD student Jenna Murray spent summers on the Wind River Indian Reservation helping her grandfather anyway she could. When he suddenly dies, she must find a way to heal before realizing her dream of a life in medicine. Nonfiction.

Headdress / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Taietsarón:sere ‘Tai’ Leclaire, Producer: David Spadora) — When an act of casual racism confronts a Queer Native man, he retreats into his mind to find the perfect clap back from various versions of his own identity.

Ekbeh / U.S.A. (Director: Mariah Eli Hernandez-Fitch) — While learning to make gumbo, the creator shares personal stories about their grandparents as a way to honor and preserve their Indigenous history and life. Nonfiction.

Baigal Nuur – Lake Baikal / Canada, Germany (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Alisi Telengut) — The formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat language (a Mongolian dialect). Animation.

Hawaiki / New Zealand (Director and Screenwriter: Nova Paul, Producer: Tara Riddell) — At the edge of the playground close to the forest, the children of Okiwi School made a refuge they call Hawaiki. Hawaiki has spiritual and metaphysical connections for Māori as the children create a space for their self-determination. Fiction.

Sunflower Siege Engine / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Sky Hopinka) — Movements of resistance are collapsed and woven together, from reflections of one’s own body in the world today, to documentation of Alcatraz, the reclamation of Cahokia, and the repatriation of the ancestors. Fiction.

Goodnight Irene / U.S.A. (Director: Sterlin Harjo) — Three Seminole patients share some laughs and poignant truths as they wait for treatment at the local Indian hospital. Fiction.