The Rider (2017)
Director: Chloe Zhao Run Time: 104 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2018
Starring: Brady Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Mooney, Tim Jandreau
Country: United States
Language: English, Spanish, Sioux
Screening as part of a Chloé Zhao retrospective.
“It almost qualifies as a documentary. Yet the film’s style, its sense of light and landscape and mood, simultaneously give it the mesmerizing force of the most confident cinematic poetry.”
– Godfrey Cheshire for RogerEbert
About the film:
Chloé Zhao’s second feature film.
Winner of the Art Cinema Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Official Selection of Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, SXSW, and New York Film Festival. Nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards.
After a tragic riding accident, young cowboy Brady, once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, is warned that his competition days are over. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.
Returning to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Zhao’s sensitive film explores the modern culture of her untrained Lakota Sioux actors.
See our upcoming films See more from Chloé Zhao“Young people still live on [these reservations]. They are on Facebook, they listen to pop music. I wasn’t interested in a romanticized version of Native Americans, or the cowboy way of life. [It was more about] what is it actually like today for these young people.”
– Chloé Zhao for Vanity Fair