The 16 Best Films by Native American Directors

Sundance breakouts sit beside films that barely reached theaters, and a few of these directors appear more than once. Comedies, documentaries and slow-burn dramas all count here.

1. 1
   Naturally Native

   Valerie Red-Horse and Jennifer Wynne Farmer's drama about three Native American sisters raised in foster care who start a cosmetics business; it premiered at Sundance in 1998 and was financed by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
2. 2
   Smoke Signals

   Chris Eyre's 1998 film from Sherman Alexie's screenplay about two young Coeur d'Alene men travelling to Phoenix; it won the Audience Award at Sundance.
3. 3
   Edge of America

   Chris Eyre's 2003 Showtime film about a Black English teacher who takes over a girls' basketball team at a reservation high school in Utah.
4. 4
   The Business of Fancydancing

   Sherman Alexie's 2002 directorial debut about a gay Spokane poet who returns to the reservation for a childhood friend's funeral.
5. 5
   The Doe Boy

   Randy Redroad's 2001 drama about a Cherokee teenager with hemophilia in Oklahoma whose first hunt ends with him shooting a doe.
6. 6
   Four Sheets to the Wind

   Sterlin Harjo's 2007 debut about a young Native man who leaves rural Oklahoma for Tulsa after his father's death; Tamara Podemski won a Sundance Special Jury Prize for her role.
7. 7
   Barking Water

   Sterlin Harjo's 2009 road movie in which a dying man and his former lover drive across Oklahoma so he can see his daughter.
8. 8
   Mekko

   Sterlin Harjo's 2015 drama about a Muscogee man released after 19 years in prison who ends up homeless on the streets of Tulsa.
9. 9
   This May Be the Last Time

   Sterlin Harjo's 2014 documentary about Muscogee Creek hymns and the 1962 disappearance of his grandfather.
10. 10
    Drunktown's Finest

    Sydney Freeland's 2014 debut following three young Navajo people whose lives cross near Gallup, New Mexico.
11. 11
    Wild Indian

    Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.'s 2021 thriller starring Michael Greyeyes as an Ojibwe man whose childhood killing of a classmate follows him into adulthood.
12. 12
    Frybread Face and Me

    Billy Luther's 2023 coming-of-age film about a boy who spends the summer of 1990 at his grandmother's ranch on the Navajo Nation.
13. 13
    Rez Ball

    Sydney Freeland's 2024 Netflix sports drama about the Chuska Warriors, a high school basketball team on the Navajo Nation.
14. 14
    Deidra & Laney Rob a Train

    Sydney Freeland's 2017 Netflix comedy about two sisters who start robbing freight trains after their mother is jailed.
15. 15
    The Cherokee Word for Water

    A 2013 drama co-directed by Charlie Soap and Tim Kelly about Wilma Mankiller and the rural Cherokee community that built its own water line.
16. 16
    Fancy Dance

    Erica Tremblay's debut feature starring Lily Gladstone as a woman searching for her missing sister on a Seneca-Cayuga reservation; it premiered at Sundance in 2023.

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