The Oscar-nominated actress has a full schedule for 2024.
No doubt about it: This is the year of Lily Gladstone.
The rising Native American star currently can be seen in Under the Bridge, the acclaimed Hulu limited-run series that has her cast as Cam Bentland, a British Columbia police officer investigating a horrific crime in her suburban community. In his review for IndieWire, critic Ben Travers wrote: “Having Gladstone play the conflicted central cop is a godsend, not only because the recent Oscar nominee is still riding a wave of well-deserved goodwill from Killers of the Flower Moon, but because she’s an actor who can play in the genre without feeling redundant… Gladstone’s emotive eyes and gentle approach give a richness to each situation, making Cam’s experience feel both unique and compelling. She shoulders Cam’s burdens with self-awareness. She may not be able to put her weariness into words until this case forces her hand, but Cam’s eyes aren’t being opened to anything she didn’t already know, somewhere, deep inside. Her attitude, her outlook, and her exhaustion don’t change over time. They just expand.”
Next month, Gladstone will return to the Cannes Film Festival — where Killers of the Flower Moon had its world premiere in 2003 — to serve on the festival’s main competition jury alongside such other notables as Barbie director Greta Gerwig, French actress Eva Green (Casino Royale, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) and Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona (Society of the Snow, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom).
Coming soon: Fancy Dance, an Apple Original Film set for theatrical release June 21, and streaming availability on Apple+ June 28. What’s it all about? According to Apple: “Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Gladstone) has cared for her niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. At the risk of losing custody to Jax’s father, Frank (Shea Whigham), the pair hit the road and scour the backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow. What begins as a search gradually turns into a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonized world at the mercy of a failed justice system.”
When she’s not working on her own projects, Gladstone is using her newly elevated celebrity to call attention to other worthy efforts. Last winter, she posted an online interview with the makers of Lakota Nation vs. United States, Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s powerful documentary about the campaign by Lakota activists to reclaim the Black Hills, sacred land that was seized from them in brazen violation of treaty agreements. (The film was honored earlier this month at the 2024 Western Heritage Awards as Best Western Documentary.)
More recently, Gladstone — who was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and whose family is involved with buffalo restoration work in the community — served as narrator and executive producer of Bring Them Home/Aiskótáhkapiyaaya, an ambitious documentary that premiered Feb. 24 at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The 85-minute film, which currently is seeking a distribution partner, chronicles a decades-long initiative by members of the Blackfoot Confederacy to bring wild buffalo back to the Blackfeet Reservation.
So what’s next? In May, Gladstone will begin production on director Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet, a “reimagining” of the well-received 1993 romantic comedy directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) that was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry just last year. Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live co-stars in the remake, which, according to the showbiz paper Variety, “follows what happens when Min’s boyfriend Chris rejects his marriage proposal. Min convinces his best friend Angela to marry him instead, paying for her partner Liz’s IVF treatments in exchange for his green card. However, things begin to unravel when Min’s grandmother makes a surprise trip from Seoul to throw the couple a Korean wedding banquet.”
And after that — well, watch this space for further developments.
