Film

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

A 2007 TV film that braids two perspectives on American Indian dispossession after Little Bighorn: Charles Eastman, a Sioux doctor educated into assimilation, and Sitting Bull, who refuses it. Handsomely mounted, emotionally direct, anchored by August Schellenberg's formidable presence. For anyone drawn to the collision of cultures and the cost of survival.

TMDb rating3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a sorrowful, unhurried history told partly through Lakota eyes, and you can sit with a slow account of broken promises.

Skip it if you want a fast, gripping western, because this is a long, talky, deliberately mournful film that moves through a lot of meetings and grief.

What it asks of you: Expect around two hours at a steady, unhurried pace, with long conversations and quiet scenes that gather weight rather than racing ahead.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Killers of the Flower Moon2023

Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour reckoning with Osage dispossession and greed. Methodical, furious, gorgeously shot. The wrongdoing is systemic and intimate at once.

But It moves slowly and asks you to sit with complicity. Some will find it heavy-handed; others will find it not nearly angry enough.

Killers of the Flower Moon poster

Yellowstone2018

Modern ranching family saga that makes land and legacy the emotional centre, not the backdrop. Smart about economics, family loyalty, and the American West as a contested space.

But It's a prestige soap opera and leans into that. If you hate melodrama or the Duttons themselves, the show will exhaust you.

Yellowstone poster

The Revenant2015

Leonardo DiCaprio as a frontiersman left for dead, clawing through brutal landscape. Visually stunning, physically committed, grounded in authentic suffering and landscape.

But The story is thin and the revenge motive feels tacked on. Some will find it a beautiful landscape film pretending to be more.

The Revenant poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Come and See1985

Both are about cultures under systematic erasure, told through the eyes of those caught between worlds. Both refuse sentimentality about suffering.

Elem Klimov's Belarusian masterpiece about a boy conscripted into WWII, shot with a documentary's rawness and a nightmare's logic. If you want to understand what displacement and cultural annihilation feel like—what watching your world end looks like—this is it.

But It is profoundly difficult to watch. Not beautiful, not cathartic. Genuinely upsetting. Not a film for an evening you need to feel okay about.

Come and See poster
More like this (8)

Dances with Wolves1990

Kevin Costner's sweeping, genuine attempt to centre Lakota humanity and perspective. Beautiful cinematography, real emotional investment in relationship and culture. A watershed film.

But It's a white man's redemption fantasy, and that framing is inescapable once you see it. The film doesn't reckon with its own comfort in that structure.

Dances with Wolves poster

18832021

Taylor Sheridan's bleak prequel to Yellowstone. Drought, cattle drives, Comanche conflict, and a family coming apart. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill anchor something genuinely tragic.

But It's unrelentingly grim and short on joy. The pacing is patient to the point of testing. Not everyone wants that much sadness.

1883 poster

Thunderheart1992

Val Kilmer as an FBI agent returning to his Sioux reservation to investigate a murder. Smart thriller that uses the genre to ask real questions about identity and sovereignty.

But The mystery plot is serviceable but not riveting. The crime drama machinery sometimes overshadows the cultural questions it's asking.

Thunderheart poster

The Black Stallion1979

A boy and a wild Arabian stallion alone on an island, then learning to trust each other. Wordless, tactile filmmaking. Pure cinema about relationship, patience, and intuition.

But It's a children's film, and a slow one. If you need plot momentum or contemporary dialogue, you'll drift.

The Black Stallion poster

Newsies1992

1899 newsboys' strike in New York, choreographed by Kenny Ortega, mostly on location, with genuine grit under the dance numbers. Earnest about labour and solidarity.

But It's a musical and unapologetically so. The historical accuracy bends for the romance and spectacle.

Newsies poster

Geronimo: An American Legend1993

Walter Hill's lean, unsentimental account of Geronimo's final years. Wes Studi in a major role, surrounded by excellent character actors. Respects Apache resistance and leadership.

But It's not flashy and the ending is foregone. Some viewers find it pessimistic to the point of inert.

Geronimo: An American Legend poster

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both grapple with identity imposed by circumstance—the pressure to become what the dominant culture demands, the self you must construct to stay alive.

Maggie Greenwald's Wyoming tale of a woman who passes as a man to survive on the frontier. Shot in amber light, modest in scope, brutally unsentimental about survival and reinvention.

But It's a small, quiet film and deliberately spare. The feminist reframing won't resonate if you're looking for grand statements.

The Ballad of Little Jo poster

The Witch2016

Like Bury My Heart, it's about the collision of rigid ideology with human life, and how power enforces conformity. Both are about the cost of assimilation and the survival of those who resist it.

Robert Eggers' 1630s New England family torn apart by isolation, hunger, and religious certainty. Shot in period aspect ratio, dense with dread and ambiguity. About how belief becomes weapon, how survival becomes impossible.

But It's oppressively slow and atmospheric rather than plot-driven. The horror is psychological and the ending offers no relief. Not cathartic.

The Witch poster

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Recommended by

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, 500 Nations, Amazing Grace, Empire of the Summer Moon, James A. Michener's Centennial, Cheyenne Autumn, Geronimo: An American Legend