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Crimes against Indigenous people, especially Indigenous women, rarely get mainstream attention, a cruel reality of which “Catch the Fair One” is painfully aware.

Crafted by award-winning filmmaker Josef Kubota Wladyka (“Manos Sucias”) and his collaborator and star Kali Reis, herself a biracial Indigenous woman, “Catch the Fair One” is highly personal and extremely intentional in bringing awareness to the crisis of missing Indigenous girls and its link to human trafficking.

Though billed as a thriller, “Catch the Fair One” feels more pressing and urgent than what Hollywood usually produces within this genre. Former championship boxer K.O. (Reis), driven by the marginalization and invisibility imposed by the dominant society, makes the rash and foolhardy decision to go undercover to find her younger sister Weeta (Mainaku Borrero), who has been missing for some time.

Fallen from her former glory and living in a women’s shelter, the assumption is K.O.

“Catch the Fair One” is activist filmmaking at its most compelling. Before you run away from the notion, consider this: It doesn’t feel like this tough, relentlessly dark thriller is trying to push some kind of political point, even if so many of its creative choices succeed in doing exactly that.

Collaborating with Native boxing champ Kali “Ko” Reis on the script, director Josef Kubota Wladyka has made a riveting vigilante story that can hold its own alongside Paul Schrader’s most punishing payback fantasies. Imagine daughter-rescue drama “Hardcore” with a female fighter in the George C. Scott role, or an inversion of revenge-minded “The Card Counter,” where it’s an above-the-law human trafficker rather than a torture-condoning U.S. general being taught a lesson at the end.

Such movies can sometimes feel overly nihilistic, as unflinching filmmakers set a self-destructive individual plunging into the darkest corners of the American dream.

Out of the darkness, some voices rise above the others. At the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, director Josef Wladyka is that voice. The creator first made waves in 2014 when his debut “Manos Sucias” (Dirty Hands)—a harrowing narcos story concerning Colombian drug trafficking—netted Wladyka Tribeca’s jury award for Best Director. Since then, he’s helmed episodes of acclaimed television programs, such as “Narcos” and “Terror.” Wladyka returns to Tribeca with “Catch the Fair One,” a bristling, horrific thriller executive produced by Darren Aronofsky, concerning a Native American woman boxer who voluntarily enters a human trafficking ring to find her kidnapped younger sister.

Read More: 2021 Tribeca Film Festival Preview: 15 Must-See Films To Watch & More

For two years, Kaylee aka… Ko has been searching for her sister Weeta (Mainaku Borrero).

Continue reading ‘Catch The Fair One’: Josef Wladyka Delivers A Cathartic, Bloody Knock-Out & Instantly Becomes One To Watch [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.

With Ronda Rousey lying low for the last few years and Gina Carano not lying nearly low enough, the fighter-to-actress pipeline isn’t flowing as steadily as it once was. But now a new challenger has entered the ring with “Catch the Fair One,” and she’s already a Wba champion in two other weight classes. After her bruising yet vulnerable lead performance in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s sex-trafficking thriller, boxer Kali Reis deserves to add another title belt to her collection (and not just because there’s so little in the way of competition).

Reis’ sinewy first movie role isn’t much of a stretch, but that’s part of why it . The Providence-born pugilist — a half-Native and half-Cape Verdean boxer who could probably destroy your entire life with a single jab to the face — plays a half-native and half-Cape Verdean boxer who could probably destroy your entire life...