Film

Indian Horse

Name: Indian Horse
Genre: Drama
Released: 2018
Cast: Sladen Peltier, Forrest Goodluck, Ajuawak Kapashesit, Edna Manitowabi, Michael Murphy

Drama
Very dark

A spare, unflinching portrait of a Anishinaabe boy's survival through Canada's residential school system and its aftermath. Richard Wagamese's adaptation moves between Saul at different ages, tracing how institutional cruelty and cultural erasure carve into a gifted young man. Quiet and necessary cinema for anyone ready to reckon with colonial violence and its long shadow.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a hockey story that is really about survival, memory and the cost of being forced to forget who you are, told with restraint rather than sports-movie uplift.

Skip it if you need relentless sports-film momentum or lighter company; its sorrow is steady, and the middle stretches can feel heavy and episodic.

What it asks of you: Ninety-six minutes, unhurried and often bleak, it wants patience across three stages of a life, with the hockey rink the one place the camera breathes.

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

If you liked this

Stolen2009

An Australian film about Indigenous children removed from their families. It shares the same documentary-like plainness and unflinching approach to systemic cruelty, with particular power in how it shows childhood innocence colliding with bureaucratic evil.

But The Australian setting means some may initially find it less personally relevant, though the parallels are stark and universal enough that this matters less than you'd think.

Come and See1985

Elem Klimov's devastating Soviet war film follows a boy inducted into violence. Like Indian Horse, it's a coming-of-age that documents how systems destroy childhood. The visual language is ravaged and indelible—nothing prettified.

But Extremely graphic and brutal. Not a film you 'enjoy' so much as endure and be changed by. Emotionally harrowing throughout.

Affinity2008

A small Canadian drama about intergenerational trauma and attempts at healing within Indigenous communities. Shares the same regional specificity and understands how damage compounds across families.

But Lesser-known film with a smaller budget means less polish. Some performances feel uneven, and the narrative doesn't always land with power.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Indian Horse

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Winter Song2023

Made by the same creative vision; a companion meditation on survival and the sacred landscape.

A 16-minute experimental film by the same director, Richard Wagamese's widow was involved. It's a visual poem about grief, land, and Indigenous spiritual practice—wordless, hypnotic, moving. Shows the landscape and loss that grounds Indian Horse in concentrated form.

But At under 17 minutes, it requires a different kind of patience and rewards a meditative rather than narrative attention. Very spare on conventional story.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire2009

Lee Daniels' film about a Black girl surviving abuse and institutional failure has the same unflinching portrayal of trauma and the small redemptive moments that emerge from survival. Heartbreaking and human.

But The brutality is relentless and graphic. It's difficult to sit with, and the style can feel deliberately provocative in ways that might distract from the character.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire poster

Beasts of the Southern Wild2012

A girl's fierce love for her father and her Louisiana community becomes entangled with class collapse and environmental catastrophe. Like Indian Horse, it braids childhood vision with the weight of systems failing vulnerable people.

But The magical-realist flourishes feel whimsical alongside genuine poverty, which some find tonally confused rather than layered.

Moonlight2016

Barry Jenkins' film follows a Black boy across three ages, mapping how identity forms under social violence. The fragmented narrative and visual poetry create intimacy while documenting systemic harm.

But The oblique storytelling and long passages of quiet observation test patience. If you want clarity and forward momentum, it withholds both.

The Florida Project2017

Sean Baker's film about families living in poverty near Disney World documents childhood resilience amid economic precarity. The handheld realism and focus on small moments mirrors Indian Horse's aesthetic.

But The lack of resolution or traditional narrative arc may feel like the film hasn't earned its runtime. Some find the social commentary too implicit.

My Name Is Khan2010

Both films argue for the humanity of those systems are designed to discard. Both center Indigenous/Muslim perspectives on institutional racism. Wildly different in style but moral spine is aligned.

An Indian film starring Shah Rukh Khan about an autistic man wrongly suspected of terrorism after 9/11. It's a counterintuitive recommendation: mainstream Bollywood production, not a serious art film, but devastatingly clear about how institutions fail vulnerable people and how one person can insist on his own dignity.

But The melodrama and romantic subplot feel at odds with Indian Horse's gravity. Bollywood conventions mean there's music and spectacle where you might expect restraint.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner2002

Both films center Indigenous experience as the protagonist's world rather than treating it as backdrop. Both are grounded in Indigenous language and perspective. Atanarjuat precedes Indian Horse; both insist on the camera's right to stay and look directly.

Zacharias Kunuk's Inuit epic—an Inuktitut-language film about survival, supernatural threat, and community justice in the Arctic. Completely unlike mainstream cinema, visually stunning, and fundamentally about Indigenous worldview asserting itself as the center, not the margin. A film that claims space.

But Nearly 3 hours, Inuktitut subtitles, and a narrative logic unfamiliar to Western cinema grammar. The pacing is ceremonial, not propulsive.