Neither Wolf Nor Dog

Scottish director Steven Lewis Simpson has come a long way since making 1994's Ties in the manner of his mentor Roger Corman. Most notably, he has shot two films on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota - Rez Bomb and A Thunder-Being Nation - and he completes the triptych with this adaptation of an award-winning book by Kent Nerburn. Christopher Sweeney plays Nerburn, who is chosen by a Lakota elder named Dan (David Bald Eagle) to ghost write his memoirs. However, the task proves tricky, as the nonagenarian keeps dozing off. Fortunately, cantankerous neighbour Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) intervenes and, during a road trip, Dan begins to unburden himself of the weight of history. Drifting tantalisingly like a native American variation on David Lynch's The Straight Story, this poignant insight into the legacy of centuries of racist brutality reaches a shattering climax at the site of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, where the 95-year-old Dave Bald Eagle improvises a speech of devastating power.