‘Fancy Dance’ (dir. Erica Tremblay, 2023)
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Lily Gladstone spent much of 2023 being rightfully celebrated for her devastating performance in Martin Scorsese’s $200 million ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ but the actress did everything in her power to share that blinding spotlight with people and projects who weren’t afforded any of the same attention, including one that was especially near and dear to her heart: Erica Tremblay’s ‘Fancy Dance.’
An instant favorite when it premiered at Sundance in January of last year, this sensitive but urgent drama about a woman (Gladstone) looking after her niece in the wake of her sister’s disappearance from an Oklahoma reservation languished without distribution even as its star became a leading contender for Best Actress, and it wasn’t until just before the Oscars that Apple finally doubled down on the Lily Gladstone business and scooped up this indie gem, which instantly became one of the strongest films in the company’s slate of original releases.
How strong? Here’s how Gladstone put it while accepting the Performance Award at IndieWire Honors last December: “This performance has been the absolute highlight of my career, the best work I feel like I’ve ever done, the most important story, elevating the awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women, missing and murdered sisters, working with the greatest, most visionary, most committed director of my life, working with somebody who I love very dearly and had the best chemistry I’ve had with somebody on screen …You all thought I was talking about the other movie, didn’t you?”
Available to stream June 28.