By Vincent Schilling. Repritned with permission from Indian Country Today.

If you are Indigenous, there are already a load of reasons to be excited for this year's Sundance Film Festival.

As many might imagine, this year's Sundance is under a bit more constraint due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place across the world. Even with restrictions in place, the festival opened officially on Jan. 28, and film-enthusiasts, film critics, and journalists have already been able to access a plethora of films, documentaries, and film shorts programs.

Make sure to follow the #NativeNerd column for reviews of a wide array of films Sundance has to offer.

Four Indigenous-made films premiering in 2021

Institute founder and president Robert Redford's original vision for the nonprofit organization and festival has been to commit to "supporting Indigenous artists throughout the Institute's history. This has established a rich legacy of work and has supported more than 350 filmmakers through labs, grants, mentorships, public programs, and the platform of the Sundance Film Festival. The Institute's Indigenous Program has a global focus and through its work strengthens Indigenous Cinema."

Four Indigenous-made films this year include filmmakers from Canada, New Zealand and the United States. One filmmaker, Alisi Telengut, is Indigenous Mongolian.

There are other films and film shorts that have an Indigenous influence with filmmakers from such places as Brazil and Mexico that will be covered in upcoming #NativeNerd review articles.

Four Indigenous-made films this year are as follows (descriptions come directly from Sundance):

The Fourfold

Director/Screenwriter: Alisi Telengut, Mongolian

Short Animation Spotlight

An exploration of the Indigenous worldview and wisdom based on ancient shamanistic traditions and animistic beliefs in Siberia and Mongolia. With handcrafted animation, a testament of reclaiming animism for environmental ethics and nonhuman materialities.

This Is the Way We Rise

Director: Ciara Lacy, Native Hawaiian

Documentary Shorts Program 1

An exploration into the creative process, following Native Hawaiian slam poet Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, as her art is reinvigorated by her calling to protect sacred sites atop Maunakea, Hawai'i.

Wild Indian

Director/Screenwriter: Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr., Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians

Starring: Michael Greyeyes, First Nations Cree

U.S. Dramatic Competition Feature

Makwa, a young Anishinaabe boy, has a rough life. He often appears at school with bruises he says he got falling down, but no one believes him. He and his only friend, Ted-O, like to escape by playing in the woods, until the day Makwa shockingly murders a schoolmate. After covering up the crime, the two boys go on to live very different lives. Now, as adult men, they must face the truth of what they have done and what they have become. In his feature debut, writer-director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. (Shinaab and Shinaab, Part II, 2017 and 2019 Sundance Film Festivals) tells a story that spans centuries and the continent in a film destined to be a touchstone in Indigenous cinema. Leading an impressive cast, Michael Greyeyes delivers a gripping, enigmatic performance as a modern Native American man who has done terrible, unforgivable things. With a strong and compelling visual style that evokes both fascination and dread, Wild Indian considers the cost of survival in a world as cruel as our own.

Coming Home in the Dark

Director: James Ashcroft, Ngā Puhi/Ngāti Kahu/English

Midnight Feature

The Fourfold. Courtesy Sundance.

Winding down a desolate road through an endless valley, Alan and Jill stop their car to take their teenage boys on a hike through the New Zealand wilderness. As they rest for a picnic at a clearing overlooking the water, two ominous-looking drifters appear out of nowhere, silently surrounding the peaceful clan and radiating a threat of imminent danger. With a swift act of violence, these men take the family by force, a seemingly random decision that sets them all on a maddening collision course with the ghosts of their pasts-from which there is no escape. With its menacing performances and calibrated stakes, director James Ashcroft's ruthless crime thriller careens into an unhinged road trip that leaves the viewer breathless through every piercing curve. Ashcroft pulls absolutely no punches in his feature debut, an astonishingly lean and relentlessly paced descent into the heart of brutality, building tension from a single speck to an avalanche with uncommon precision. Contains extreme violence and gore.