'War Pony' brings Pine Ridge Reservation to Cannes
23.05.2022 - 17:39
/ abcnews.go.com
CANNES, France -- South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation has often been depicted in film but rarely from the inside. The Cannes Film Festival entry “War Pony," though, sought to capture daily life on the reservation by relying on the perspectives of its Native American residents.The film was directed by the actor Riley Keough and her friend, Gina Gammell.
They both reside in Los Angeles. But while shooting Andrea Arnold's 2016 film “American Honey” across the U.S.
heartland, Keough shared a scene with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, two young Lakota men from Pine Ridge without any previous acting experience whom Arnold had enlisted as extras.“We just got stuck in a motel room together for four hours,” Keough, the “Zola” and “The Girlfriend Experience” actor, recalled in an interview in Cannes. “Our scene was moved so we were just sitting there drinking beer.”“She was the star there so I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ Just on set drinking,” says Sioux Bob, smiling.
“I got paid $2,000 for, like, two hours of my time, so I’m not mad at it.”But what began an unlikely friendship — and eventually collaboration — would stretch over the next seven years. Keough and Gammell would visit Pine Ridge and, later, Sioux Bob and Reddy would travel out to Los Angeles.
Hanging out and making Snapchat videos eventually morphed into a screenplay written by Sioux Bob and Reddy.From such modest beginnings and a lot of just sitting around drinking, “War Pony” emerged as not just an accomplished portrait of life on Pine Ridge but an enthusiastically received Cannes premiere in the festival's Un Certain Regard section.“It’s so wild,” Keough says, laughing and shaking her head in disbelief. “Every time I look at Frank and Gina, I’m like, ‘What?’ We know
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