Poised for quite a major fall with Martin Scorsese’s stellar Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone also leads one of our most recommended films of the summer. Though it premiered at last year’s SXSW festival to strong acclaim, Music Box Films smartly waited until this summer to release The Unknown Country ahead of Scorsese’s epic a few months later. Ahead of a July 28 release, the first trailer and poster have now arrived for Morrisa Maltz’s debut feature.
Here’s the synopsis: “Reeling from a devastating loss, Tana (Lily Gladstone) is pulled back into the world by an unexpected invitation to her cousin’s wedding. She packs up her late grandmother’s Cadillac and hits the open road, driving from her home in Minnesota to South Dakota. After reconnecting with her Oglala Lakota family, Tana sets off to retrace a surreal journey that her grandmother took decades ago, searching for the spot captured in an old family photograph. As she travels, Tana finds connection in the stories of everyday people who’ve settled down far off the main roads including Isaac (Raymond Lee), who provides a pivotal clue to understanding the lost location that could cultivate closure.”
John Fink said in his review, “Beginning with a departure in the dead of night in the middle of winter, and ending perhaps where its lead Tana (Lily Gladstone) was destined to go, Morrisa Maltz’s road trip film The Unknown Country was one of the most exciting offerings at SXSW. In a haunting exploration of biography and geography, Tana traverses a landscape from South Dakota to Texas, along the way stopping to examine lives well-lived as the film enters a quasi-documentary mode. The world proves quite a free place for Tana and we are given delightful, sometimes inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking insights into the people we pass by. They tell us their life stories as Tana flows between hotels, diners, gas stations, beer gardens, and convenience stores.”
Also starring Richard Ray Whitman, Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Devin Shangreaux, Jazmine Bearkiller Shangreaux, Pam Richter, Scott Stample, Dale Leander Toller, Florence R. Perrin, and Teresa Boyd, see the trailer and poster below.
The Unknown Country opens on July 28.