Shifting Views with Drunktown’s Finest

Sydney Freeland (Navajo) on the set of "Drunktown's Finest."

Photo courtesy of Dry Lake Productions.

How do you take cinema fearlessly by the horns? Just tell the best story possible.

That’s what Sydney Freeland (Navajo) has done with her latest film, Drunktown’s Finest, which debuted earlier this year at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The 95-minute coming-of-age story catapulted by complex identity issues and characters struggling with leaving their homes takes its name from a controversial 20/20 segment about Gallup, N.M. Called “Drunk Town, USA,” the late-1980s piece for the ABC News program branded the town on the border of the Navajo Nation as a place mired in alcoholism.

Drunktown’s Finest is Freeland’s attempt at defying the skewed judgment cast on her home community. “The title is very personal for me,” says the 33-year-old Freeland, who grew up in Gallup. She now lives and works in Los Angeles. “They came in and only focused on the drunks. Why didn’t they look at anyone else doing their everyday lives? They are just surviving.” She used the 20/20 piece, a dot on the town’s timeline, as an entry point for delivering through the big screen what she sees as a more complete perspective. “I’m not trying to change people’s minds about any particular subject. I just want to do an honest portrayal of this community, where there’s good stuff and bad stuff.”

Sundance brought a refreshing and welcome moment in January for Freeland, who spent years building her career. The film created a solid buzz at the festival, and the online magazine Variety reported in late January that AMC/Sundance Channel Global picked up the film for several of its international markets.

Actor-director Robert Redford, founder of Sundance and an executive director of Drunktown’s Finest, says he hopes the film will reach a wider audience. “I’m very proud of this film,” Redford tells Native Peoples. “I was there the opening night and I could see people brought to tears by the power of the film.”

Drunktown’s Finest fits into the overall vision of Sundance, the 10-day film festival that turns the resort town of Park City into a hub for independent filmmakers every year. It’s known for putting forward stories that are more offbeat, like Freeland’s. “The mainstream Hollywood is good for what it does, but it’s pretty narrow in its focus and it sometimes is afraid to take chances with the more humanistic stories in film or the more independent type of films. Sundance is all about independent cinema,” Redford says.

Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Mescalero Apache), director of the Sundance Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program, says Drunktown’s Finest cleared a highly competitive selection process after some 6,000 films were reviewed. “She was able to show the humanity and the hope that exists (in Gallup),” he says of Freeland.

Actors Jeremiah Bitsui and Carmen Moore in "Drunktown's Finest." Photo courtesy of Dry Lake Productions.

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Freeland has a rich view of the art of filmmaking, having worked as a production assistant, writer and director guiding the shot. A San Francisco Academy of Art University graduate, Freeland built her career over seven years; prior to creating Drunktown’s Finest, she received one of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ (SWAIA) highest film honors for her film Hoverboard. The six-minute short earned her SWAIA’s 2012 Classification X Narrative Short award, and it also was selected for the PBS 2013 Online Film Festival.

Freeland says the narrative for Drunktown’s Finest weaves the stories of three young Natives  a rebellious father-to-be with military ambitions, a young woman preparing for college, and a transsexual woman with dreams of a modeling career. All three face harsh realities in a modern world.

Rising Native actors starring in the film include Kiowa Gordon (Hualapai), a member of the famed “wolf pack” in the blockbuster Twilight Saga films, and Jeremiah Bitsui (Diné/Omaha), who had a notable role in AMC’s popular Breaking Bad series. Bitsui says jumping into the role of Luther SickBoy Maryboy, the father-to-be, was not a large leap for him. He related to the character’s turmoil with being a Native in an urban setting.

“There’s always a carryover in terms of personal life or personal experiences or perspective. The way you view life becomes a part of the way you shape characters,” Bitsui says. “It allows us to be able to get out some of these things we’re dealing with in our communities and maybe inspire some conversations, or at least be able to show that we have struggles we are still dealing with.”

Freeland says the film’s characters are amalgamations of people she’s known or with whom she’s interacted throughout her life. All but four of the 36 speaking roles went to Native actors, and 18 of those roles went to Navajo actors. “I really enjoyed seeing so many Natives in front of the camera,” she says.

New faces in the film include actresses Morningstar Angeline (Diné), Magdalena Begay (Diné) and Carmen Moore (Diné), who plays Felixia John, a transgender character. “Some of the things that the character’s been through I’ve been through,” says Moore. She says that her casting in the film is revolutionary for the entire film industry.

“In most mainstream Hollywood movies, you get a woman who plays a transgender character, or you get a man in a wig who tries to sell being a woman. It’s very rare that you actually get a transgender person playing a transgender person. This film defiantly breaks the mold of that.” She hopes the film leads to more casting of transgender actors in transgender roles.

“We need more Native films out there like this film,” Moore says. “It takes someone with a creative mind and a whole lot of determination to bring something like this.”

Actors on set during the filming of "Drunktown's Finest." Photo courtesy of Dry Lake Productions.

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Freeland spent years developing and fine-tuning the story behind Drunktown’s Finest before taking on the challenge of shooting it in just 15 days last summer in New Mexico. By comparison, most blockbuster films take longer than a year to wrap.

The film’s debut at Sundance in January didn’t mark the first time it went before the institute. The organization’s 2009 Native Lab opened its doors to Freeland more than four years ago with its Native Lab and later its Screenwriters Lab, Directors Lab, Composers Lab and Producers Summit. She says the Institute’s Native Lab provided immense support.

“I saw something in Sydney; I saw an instinct,” says Redford, recalling Freeland’s time in the Sundance labs. “I felt that she had a real talent, and we wanted to keep working with her to help her shape that talent.” She has an intuitive sense for drama and storytelling, and her focus on applying her talent to her culture and the social conditions Native people face is impressive, he says.

“If we can help her develop those instincts, I think she’s going to make a good film,” Redford says. “That’s why I felt strong about her and still do now, more than ever.”

For more information on Drunktown’s Finest, visit the film’s website at

Tara Gatewood (Isleta Pueblo/Navajo) works with Koahnic Broadcast Corporation’s Native America Calling and is a regular contributor to Native Peoples. Her work also has appeared in the The Boston Globe, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Aberdeen American News.