Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015)

“Songs My Brother Taught Me” (USA, 2015, drama, 98 min., not rated)

Written and directed by Chloé Zhao and produced by Forest Whitaker. It is Zhao’s debut feature film and was developed in Sundance Institute workshops.

Set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota, it explores the bond between a Lakota Sioux brother and his younger sister amid poverty, alcoholism and violence.

Most of the cast are first time actors from the reservation’s Little Wound High School. Cast the the single mother of the brother and sister is Irene Bedard, the daughter of an Alaskan Eskimo and married to a man of Cree descent. She was the model and voice for Pocahontas in the Disney movie.

Screened at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals.