While there was much Oscar buzz around “Killers of the Flower Moon” actor Lily Gladstone (one of the most exciting cinematic names of the past decade), there was another Gladstone-starrer out in the world last year, quietly captivating a smaller audience in limited release. That picture was Morrisa Maltz’s hypnotic road movie “The Unknown Country,” an original narrative touched by a documentarian’s perceptive sensibility that followed Gladstone’s Tana on a journey through the American Midwest and, ultimately, her grief. Those who made the time for Maltz’s modest film then met the young Native girl Jasmine “ Jazzy ” Shangreaux, Maltz’s real-life goddaughter.
Now, the young girl gets her own vehicle with the tender and poetic “Jazzy,” debuting at Tribeca Festival . At first glance, “Jazzy” might seem more polished and traditionally structured than its predecessor. But the two films share a proudly scrappy and loose-limbed spirit in their soulful, tranquil pace.
Like “The Unknown Country,” “Jazzy” is a film where everything happens beneath its surface without much happening on its façade — Maltz just patiently observes her characters and their South Dakota environs, sneakily immersing the viewers in the girlhood rhythms of Jazzy and her best friend, Syriah Fool Head Means, over a six-year period that the story covers in just over 80 minutes. If recent documentaries like “Cusp,” “Girls State” and “Four Daughters” proved that t.