Is Rez Ball on Netflix a true story?
The new sports film explores the world of Native American high school basketball.
Netflix has had some success with sporting underdog movies in the past – for example Hustle and Nyad – and now the streamer has released another film that very much fits into that category: Rez Ball.
The film tells the story of a Native American high school basketball team who lose their star player while competing for the state championship title, and features an ensemble cast of Native stars including Jessica Matten, Julia Jones, Amber Midthunder, and Kiowa Gordon.
But is the film based on a true story? Read on for everything you need to know...
Is Rez Ball on Netflix based on a true story?
Well... kind of. The film is loosely based on the nonfiction sports novel Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation which was written by The New York Times journalist Michael Powell and published in 2019.
The novel told the story of the basketball team at Chinle High School in Northern Arizona over the course of a whole season, with the synopsis explaining how Powell "details his season-long immersion in the team, town, and culture, in which there were exhilarating wins, crushing losses, and conversations on long bus rides across the desert about dreams of leaving home and the fear of the same".
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But while the film is very much informed by the real stories told in that book and the culture surrounding high school basketball for Native Americans, the actual narrative it tells is a fictional one created by co-writers Sterlin Harjo (co-creator of Reservation Dogs) and Sydney Freeland (who also directs).
The film shifts its focus from Chinle High School to the fictional Chuska Warriors from New Mexico, and the characters we meet are not specifically based on real people.
"I didn't need to read the book," Harjo explained in an interview with Time. "It was really about just telling a real story that we both connected to and felt authentic and real to us."
"For us it was really trying to build this world from the ground up," Freeland added.
So in short, the events of Rez Ball are not specifically based on true events – albeit this is a film very much rooted in the reality of Native American high school basketball.
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