WELCOME TO MUBI

Lily Gladstone won a Gotham Award for her luminous performance in Morrisa Maltz’s debut feature, which follows the actor from motels and diners to the heart of American life. Creating an authentic, but dreamlike picture of the Midwest, poetry and documentary blur beautifully in this hybrid film.

Anger links arms with resilience in Alanis Obomsawin’s riveting two-hour account of the Oka Crisis, a bellicose conflict that received global attention. Unwavering in its commitment to sacred land and First Nations struggles, Kanehsatake is among the filmmaker’s most accomplished works.

Writer-director Felipe Gálvez emerges as a startling new voice in Latin American cinema with this searing revisionist western. Capturing majestic landscapes with a painterly eye, Chile’s official Oscar® entry is a singularly immersive reckoning with national myth-making and its attendant violence.

With an Indigenous way of life suddenly under fire, Alanis Obomsawin’s practice takes an explicitly political turn in this spirited documentary. Usually present in voice-over only, the filmmaker and activist intervenes onscreen to expose a Canadian official’s prejudice with trenchant insight.

Bureaucracy is another channel for systemic prejudice in this portrait of an ardent protestor, maligned for her Mohawk name. Giving voice to one individual who set aside pacifism to protect an endangered environment and her people, this short resonates with historic fights for self-determination.

A chimeric wonder from director Lisandro Alonso, Eureka slips the boundaries of space and time. Beginning as a Viggo Mortensen-led western before morphing into something else entirely, this metaphysical meditation on the exploitation of Indigenous histories is mesmerising, transcendental cinema.

Sitting in on an art class for her first short, Indigenous director Alanis Obomsawin celebrates the nascent creativity of Cree children. Accompanying their lovely impressions of wintry landscapes and nativity scenes, the little artists talk in voice-over about their processes, ideas, and dreams.

Testifying to solidarity between diverse groups of people, this rousing film documents a fundraiser that doubles as an absorbing showcase for Indigenous talents. Keep an eye out for Alanis Obomsawin—she’s the woman in red who participates in this joyful event with a beautiful comradely lullaby.

In this plentiful picture of gendered experience in Indigenous communities, all manner of grandmaternal traditions are generously shared. Just as attentive to the hardship that results from discrimination, Alanis Obomsawin underlines the vital importance of togetherness, ritual, and education.

Melina León sheds light on a dark chapter in Peru’s recent history in her mesmerising feature debut, which earned comparisons with Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma! With strikingly framed black and white cinematography, the sumptuous imagery of this eerily evocative film brings majesty to a tragic real story.