Indigenous Screenwriters List 2022 Finalists Set

Erik Pedersen
·3 min read
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IllumiNative, The Black List and Sundance Institute today revealed the finalists for their 2022 Indigenous List, which represent the best and most promising Native creatives in the film and television industry. See the list below.

The Indigenous List was launched in 2020 to provide a platform for Indigenous writers to showcase their scripts, create additional pathways and opportunities within the industry, and support the development of the next generation of screenwriters.

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This year’s writers will have the opportunity to meet with four Indigenous creatives who have first-look and/or overall development deals at major studios, including Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne); actor-director Michael Greyeyes (Firestarter, Acting Good); Sierra Teller Ornelas, showrunner/co-creator of Rutherford Falls; and Sterlin Harjo, showrunner/co-creator of Reservation Dogs.

“As one of the few Indigenous producers with a first look at a studio, I’m excited to help support our storytelling community engage in business to bring more exciting Indigenous stories to audiences in the U.S. and around the world,” Runningwater said.

Here are the 2022 Indigenous List screenwriters and their scripts:

Taietsarón:sere “Tai” Leclaire
HOW TO DEAL WITH SYSTEMIC RACISM IN THE AFTERLIFE
Lyle Westman is dead and over it. When he discovers he has to spend 1,400 years haunting in redface, he decides to strike back at the systemic problems plaguing the afterlife.

Alex Nystrom
BETWEEN
On a mysterious sinking island off the coast of Louisiana, home to a tight-knit Native community, a compulsive man finds himself up against untold tribal secrets, disappearing children, and the unearthing of a repressed traumatic past.

Bryson Chun and Tara Aquino
DON’T FREAK
What do you do when your ex writes a song about you and becomes the biggest popstar in the world? If you kidnap your best friend, steal a horse, and crash Good Morning America to confront her were on your breakup bingo card, then you win!

Maya Rose Dittloff
SWEETNESS OF THE BLOOD
Haunted by the unsolved mystery of her sister’s disappearance, Rose Home Gun returns to her childhood home on the Blackfeet Reservation when ghosts of the past rise to threaten her reality — and her sanity.

W.A.W. Parker
THE BARON
Love is a battlefield when a brash, flamboyant, gay Prussian military commander runs into his ex at Valley Forge after he’s hired by George Washington to whip the fledgling American Army into shape during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War. Comps: THE GREAT meets DICKINSON.

Brian Bahe
DECOLONIZE
When the United States is given back to Indigenous people, two self-involved millennials are forced into a leadership role they didn’t sign up for.

Neil Tinkham
THE TAOTAOMONA
A child of divorce goes on a hunt to capture a mythical creature that lives in the jungle, serendipitously bringing his family closer in the process.

Kathryn Machi
JUNE ROSE
In San Francisco in the late 1960s, a housewife and mother of three teenagers belatedly discovers her Cherokee heritage and defies her conservative husband — and her Cherokee father — to join the Red Power and feminist movements.

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