For filmmaker Erica Tremblay , “Fancy Dance” has already achieved the highest of honors. After screening the film for an audience of Cayuga-language speakers in Toronto this past year, one of the elders grabbed her by the cheeks and told her “good job” in Cayuga. “Some of them were crying because they’re in their 80s and 90s and they’ve never seen their language in a film before,” says Tremblay.
“To me, that’s the biggest award that the film has received so far.” “Fancy Dance,” which hits theaters Friday in limited release before arriving on Apple TV+ on June 28, follows Jax ( Lily Gladstone ) and her teenage niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), for whom she has been caring since the disappearance of Roki’s mother. As Jax juggles searching for her sister and helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow dance, authorities come to take Roki away from the reservation and place her with her white grandfather.
Directed by Tremblay , 43, who co-wrote the script with Tlingit screenwriter Miciana Alise, “Fancy Dance” marks the Seneca-Cayuga filmmaker’s narrative feature debut. The film premiered as part of the U.S.
dramatic competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Like her 2020 short “Little Chief” (which also stars Gladstone), “Fancy Dance” is set in and around the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Tremblay, who has written and directed on series such as “ Reservation Dogs ” and “ Dark Winds ,” explains that.