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Final five nominations to be announced on November 2.

Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall and Todd Haynes’ May December are among the titles on the latest British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) longlists, for Best Feature Documentary and Best International Independent Film.

15 films are on the documentary longlist, with five of them by first-time directors; with 17 films on the international list.

Scroll down for the longlists

Alongside McQueen’s film combining analysis of Amsterdam during the Second World War with the present day, documentary titles include Kevin MacDonald’s High & Low: John Galliano about the...

The story of Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s War Pony, which traces the lives of members of the Oglala Lakota tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, starts on the set of another film. As she awaited filming a scene in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, Keough struck up a friendship with extras Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob from Pine Ridge. She would later visit them at the reservation with Gammell, her producing partner, and the quartet’s energy began funneling the energy of their friendship into a cinematic form.

“The spirit of that summer informed War Pony,” Keough admits. Just as American Honey’s egalitarian end credits don’t attribute hierarchical titles to the artists involved in the film, so, too, does War Pony embody a spirit of collaborative creativity. In conjunction with the wider Pine Ridge community, Bill and Franklin’s experiences and stories of growing up...

You’ve seen it a million times in a million different movies: A dude is cruising in his neighborhood, bumping bass-heavy tunes out of his car and dragging on a cigarette. His baseball cap is tilted, the heart tattoo inked on his cheek looks like a birthmark, and thanks to the camera placement, we’re riding shotgun right next to him. His buddy in the basketball jersey is in the back seat, conked out. They’re driving through one of the residential areas on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota,...

Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s War Pony embodies the unconventional spirit that’s marked the former’s acting career. Shot on location at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and starring a cast of indigenous Lakota non-actors, the film details the daily struggles of a hustler, Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), and a neglected middle-schooler, Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder). Structured in intertwining storylines, War Pony possesses a gritty essence, but for however uncompromising its glimpse into Bill and Matho’s stagnantly bleak existences may be, the film also feels generic in execution.

This can be chalked up to War Pony’s glaring, almost frustrating lack of nuance or specificity, as the filmmakers never effectively detail the characters’ relation to the various cultural, psychological, or historical intricacies of their milieu. Instead, they’re almost stubbornly focused on capturing an unflinchingly unvarnished view of day-to-day life on society’s fringes.

Riley Keough made her feature directorial debut with “War Pony,” which premiered at 2022 Cannes, where it won the Camera d’Or Prize for best first feature.

The newly minted “Daisy Jones and the Six” Emmy nominee co-directed the drama along with Gina Gammell from a script both directors co-wrote with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. “War Pony” follows the interlocking stories of two young Lakota men on the Pine Ridge Reservation as they face a world built against them and navigate unique paths to manhood.

At 23, Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) just wants to make something of himself. Whether it’s delivering goods or breeding Poodles, he is determined to hustle his way to the “American Dream.” Meanwhile, 12-year-old Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder) can’t wait to become a man. Desperate for approval from his young father, a series of impulsive decisions turns Matho’s life upside down and he...

While Riley Keough was working on Andrea Arnold’s American Honey in South Dakota she connected with a pair of extras, Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, and after becoming friends, decided to make her directorial debut inspired by their lives on Pine Ridge Reservation. Co-directed with Gina Gammell—co-founder of their production company, Felix Culpa––the drama premiered at Cannes Film Festival last fall and will now arrive in theaters and on VOD on July 28. Ahead of the release, the first trailer has now been released.

Here’s the synopsis: “War Pony follows the interlocking stories of two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. At 23, Bill just wants to make something of himself. Whether it’s delivering goods or breeding Poodles, he is determined to hustle his way to the “American Dream”. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Matho can’t wait to become a man. Desperate for approval from his young father,...

While July is a bit of a lighter month for worthwhile cinematic offerings, it’s only because a trio of blockbuster hopefuls, while anticipated, are taking up so much oxygen. Thankfully, there’s still room for my favorite film of the year, a few worthwhile directorial debuts, and more. Check out my picks to see below and catch up with the best films from the first half of the year.

9. Talk to Me (Danny and Michael Philippou; July 28)

A horror hit at Sundance that was quickly snatched up by A24. John Fink said in his review, “Featuring a great premise from which to build a franchise, YouTube creators Danny and Michael Philippou’s directorial debut Talk To Me is a refreshing retread, imagining tantalizing “micro-possessions” that get stronger the more you use them. The premise is simple enough: a possessed hand that seems to have been passed down for generations...

Keough – Elvis’s granddaughter – had already made her name as an actor. Then as a first-time director, she won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. She and creative partner Gina Gammell talk about War Pony, their film about a Native American reservation

In 2015, Riley Keough was in a motel in South Dakota waiting to shoot a scene in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey. As the hours dragged, she got chatting to a couple of extras, Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, two Native American men who’d grown up on the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. “It was one of those situations where we started talking, and we just didn’t stop,” Keough says. “Then lunchtime came, and I found myself going, ‘Can I sit with you?’”

Keough and the two men swapped numbers and, after shooting wrapped, she flew from Los Angeles to the reservation for a holiday – joined by...

Picturehouse Entertainment unveiled a new trailer for the award-winning ‘War Pony’, out in UK and Irish cinemas on 9th June.

The directorial debut of Riley Keough and Gina Gammell and co-written with first-time writers, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, a story of collaboration, with the directors working closely with members of the Pine Ridge community to shine a light on the Native voice and portray the gritty realism of growing up on a Reservation in modern-day America. At the heart of the film are two remarkable performances from newcomers Jojo Bapteise Whiting and Ladainian Crazy Thunder.

The film was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for best first feature film, it has gone on to play numerous other festivals such as SXSW and was the Surprise Film during last month’s Glasgow Film Festival, receiving a wealth of positive reviews.

Also in trailers – Exclusive Trailer:...

Momentum Pictures has acquired North American rights to Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s award-winning feature directorial debut “War Pony.” CAA brokered the domestic deal, while Protagonist Pictures is handling international sales.

Co-written with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, the film follows two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Their interlocking stories function as an exploration of growing up and searching for a sense of belonging in a world where the chips are stacked against them.

“War Pony” premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature. It will make its U.S. debut at SXSW on Thursday.

Also Read:

‘War Pony’ Film Review: Riley Keough and Gina Gammell Tell Indigenous Story From the Inside

In TheWrap’s Cannes review, Steve Pond called the film “unhurried, naturalistic and heartbreaking,” praising the “intimacy” it achieves as “a story told from the inside,...

Exclusive: Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s feature directorial debut War Pony has seen its US and Canadian rights acquired by Momentum Pictures.

The movie which made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard and won the Camera d’Or (awarded for Best First Feature Film), will play SXSW, tomorrow, March 16.

War Pony follows the interlocking stories of two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Bound by their shared search for belonging, each of the young men grapples with a world built against them, as they navigate their unique paths to manhood.

Back in 2015, Keough befriended two extras on the set of American Honey—Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. She introduced them to her best friend Gina Gammell, and a creative foursome was born. The stories in War Pony are drawn from Sioux Bob and Reddy’s own lives...

The US drama is inspired by true events.

Les Films du Losange has taken French rights to Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s directorial debut War Pony from Protagonist Pictures.

Premiering in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard earlier this year, the US drama follows two boys, played by newcomers Jojo Bapteise Whiting and Ladainian Crazy Thunder, growing up in South Dakota as they grapple with the different phases of their life.

The screenplay was inspired was true events and co-written by Gammel and Keough, who is better known for her acting roles in Mad Max: Fury Road and American Honey, with...

Drama is co-directed by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell.

Picturehouse Entertainment has secured all UK and Ireland rights to Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s War Pony, which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes on Saturday (May 28).

The deal was closed with UK outfit Protagonist Pictures, which is handling international sales.

Inspired by true events, the US drama follows two boys living in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, as they face the difficult realities of growing into adulthood. The two central roles are played by Jojo Bapteise Whiting and Ladainian Crazy Thunder.

It marks the directorial debut of Keough,...

Riley Keough and Gina Gammell make a compelling a strong directorial debut with "War Pony," a film that feels like the best Sean Baker movie he didn't direct. This is a brutally honest look at a community seldom portrayed on screen with care or honesty, with a simple story that may not pack much in terms of plot, but packs a whole lot of authenticity and empathy, with a stellar cast of mostly first-time actors.

Frank Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy also make their feature debut with a script that centers on two young Oglala Lakota men living on the Pine...

The post War Pony Review: A Brutally Honest Look at Life on the Rez [Cannes] appeared first on /Film.

There are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States. South Dakota is home to nine, the majority of which lie on the western half. Along the Nebraska border and the southern tip of the Badlands sits the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of America’s largest. At 2.1 million acres, the vast, breathtaking prairie landscapes and infinite horizon of rolling hills might distract from the fact that it’s also among the poorest counties in the country.

Riley Keough was working on American Honey in South Dakota when she met a couple locals who’d been cast as extras: Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob. They hit it off and immediately became friends outside production. Bill and Frank invited her to their home, Pine Ridge, and Keough and co-director Gina Gammell—who started a production company, Felix Culpa, together in 2018—quickly fell in love with the people and the land.

It is more than a bit ironic in a Cannes Film Festival where Baz Luhrman’s biopic Elvis is one of the most anticipated entries, that the subject of it, Elvis Presley turns out to have another direct connection this year’s fest. His granddaughter Riley Keough is making her directorial debut with the Un Certain Regard selection, War Pony having its World Premiere today. The film focuses on two young Native Americans coming of age and trying to get by in a story set on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It is a location that has intrigued other filmmakers like Chloe Zhao (The Rider) in recent years, and now has caught the attention of Keough and her co-director Gina Gammell in order to tell an authentic and unique contemporary tale of Native American youth brought to life by an impressive group of first-time actors, mostly locals the...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Momentum Pictures releases the film in theaters on Friday, July 28.

In the summer of 2015, Riley Keough met a pair of remarkable young men, cast as extras in Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey,” at a motel in South Dakota. Both members of the Lakota nation and residents of the nearby Pine Ridge reservation, Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob took quickly to the actress. The trio — later joined by Keough’s producing partner Gina Gammell — formed a fast friendship that eventually spawned Keough and Gammell’s directorial debut, “War Pony.”

Franklin Sioux Bob and Reddy are credited as co-writers on the project, alongside Keogh and Gammell (who also produced it), while Franklin Sioux Bob also appears in a small, but pivotal role in the film. Steeped in their own stories, “War Pony” follows two young Oglala Lakota men...

The tenderness, wisdom and instinct to survive of two teenage males is beautifully observed in actor-turned-director Riley Keough’s debut feature

Riley Keough is an actor who establishes her film-making credentials with this terrific debut feature, co-directed with Gina Gammell. It is a movie set on and around the Pine Ridge Native American reservation in South Dakota and is scripted by Gammell with Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob. It’s a really heartfelt and absorbing story (with something of Chloé Zhao’s The Rider) about two young guys from the Oglala Lakota community, one about 12 or 13, the other 19 or 20. They are not known to each other, or at least not until the very end of the film. But the drama lets us see how much life experience they share, and how they could almost be the same boy at different times of life.

Ladainian Crazy Thunder plays Matho, a young kid with an aggressive,...

Riley Keough has been in the business for more than a decade. At just 32 years old, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley has made a name for herself as a performer with great range, known for “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Magic Mike,” “Zola” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience,” which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. But before she broke out as an actor, Keough always wanted to be a director.

Keough is now at the Cannes Film Festival, where the first film she has helmed, “War Pony” — the indigenous coming-of-age story she co-directed with her producing partner Gina Gammell — is making its world premiere.

Keough and Gammell joined Variety and Kering at Cannes for a Women in Motion conversation in which Keough says she screamed when she found out “War Pony” had been selected for the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes.

“Cannes gives it validation,” adds Gammell, who...

When “War Pony” debuts in Cannes on May 21, it will represent the culmination of a project almost a decade in the making. Directed by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, and written by Keough, Gammell, Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, the film about two boys growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota took seven years from conception to post-production.

Protagonist Picture is handling international sales on the project while CAA Media Finance is repping North America.

“It was a very slow burn,” Keough says of the film. “Because we didn’t really have a clear intention for many years.”

Keough met Reddy and Sioux Bob, who both grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, when they were extras on Andrea Arnold’s 2016 feature “American Honey,” in which Keough starred. When a scene featuring the trio got delayed by six hours, they had nothing else to do but hang out,...

Ahead of “War Pony“‘s Cannes debut in the Un Certain Regard section, the film’s directors, Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, posed with lead actor Ladainian Crazy Thunder and producer Willi White. The film is the product of a years-long friendship and cross-cultural collaboration among Keough, Gammell and Native American storytellers Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy.

“This story is tough and rooted in this space of struggle,” said producer Willi White. “But as I saw Riley and Gina’s relationship with Frank and Bill and the crew, how they worked with these kids (actors) and how they brought in our community, it allowed me to feel safe. I think they’ve been really intentional about building relationships in the community over a long time. And to hear feedback from some of the young actors who resonated with the story and talked about how it made them feel visualized,...

This story about “War Pony” first appeared in the Cannes issue of TheWrap magazine.

It was just another day in South Dakota on the set of the film “American Honey” when Riley Keough met two men who would change her life, alter the course of her career and lead to “War Pony,” an intimate and affecting film that screens in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Keough was one of the stars of “American Honey,” a raucous Andrea Arnold film about a ragtag gang of magazine-selling youngsters roaming the country, and she was scheduled to have a scene with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, Native American men in their early 20s who’d been hired as actors for the day from the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“I was sitting in the shade eating some fruit, and Riley walked up to me and asked me if I wanted some water,...

Protagonist Pictures have boarded Riley Keough’s directorial debut “War Pony” (previously known as “Beast.”)

Keough (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) co-directed the feature with Gina Gammell (“Manodrome”). It is set to premiere at Cannes next month in the Un Certain Regard strand of the festival.

Protagonist will rep international sales on the project while CAA Media Finance is handling North American sales.

Inspired by real events and starring Jojo Bapteise Whiting and Ladainian Crazy Thunder, “War Pony” tells the story of two boys – 23-year-old Bill and 12-year-old Matho – growing up on Pine Ridge Reservation in the U.S. While Bill is reaching for the American Dream, Matho is desperate to become a man and seeks approval from his father. “Bound by their shared search for belonging, each of the boys grapple with identity, family, and loss, as they navigate their unique paths to manhood,” reads the logline.

Keough and Gammell...

The debut feature from Riley Keough and Gina Gammell was previously known as ‘Beast’.

UK-based sales outfit Protagonist Pictures and CAA Media Finance are handling sales for Cannes Un Certain Regard title War Pony, the directorial debut of Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, which was previously titled Beast.

Protagonist will introduce the title to international buyers at Cannes, while CAA Media Finance takes on North American sales.

Bill Reddy, Franklin Sioux Bob, Gammell, and Keough wrote the film, which was inspired by real events and tells the stories of two Lakota boys living in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota,...