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9 months ago
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EXCLUSIVE: Lily Gladstone is set to reteam with Morrisa Maltz on Jazzy, a companion piece and follow-up to their acclaimed indie drama The Unknown Country, released by Music Box Films, which brought Gladstone a Gotham Award last fall. In addition to starring, Gladstone will exec produce, along with the team at Duplass Brothers Productions.
While The Unknown Country followed Gladstone’s character — the grieving Tana — on a lonely road trip across America, it also introduced the scene-stealing character of Jazzy, based on and played by Jasmine Bearkiller Shangreaux, a young Oglala Lakota girl growing up in South Dakota. The roles are flipped in Jazzy, with Shangreaux taking center stage and Gladstone supporting her narrative journey. Shot over six years, the film sees Jazzy and her peers grow up on camera as they navigate the space between childhood and young adulthood. When her best friend moves away, Jazzy experiences both a sense of loss and her first inkling of independence.
Like The Unknown Country, the new film blends real-life textures and characters into a fictional narrative: Shangreaux is the daughter of producer Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, who was integral to the story construction of both films. (Shangreaux’s real-life wedding was captured on camera in The Unknown Country.) Jazzy was written in collaboration with the children who appear on screen and is true to their perspective, immersing the audience in their experience.
Also starring Syriah Fool Head Means, Richard Ray Whitman and Raymond Lee, the film has had much of the team from The Unknown Country return alongside writer-director-producer Maltz, including producer Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, producer-editor-writer Vanara Taing, DP Andrew Hajek, producers Miranda Bailey and Natalie Whalen, co-producer Katherine Harper, and composers Alexis Marsh and Neil Halstead. In addition to Duplass Brothers Productions, the film hails from production companies The Film Arcade and Fit Via Vi. Exec producers include Gladstone, Mark Duplass, Mel Eslyn, Jay Duplass, Jason Beck and Bill Way. Producers are Miranda Bailey, Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Natalie Whalen, John Way, Elliott Whitton, Vanara Taing and Maltz. Shuli Harel serves as co-EP.
One of the first features to receive the SAG Waiver Agreement in July 2023 to complete filming amidst the dual strike, Jazzy wrapped production the following month.
Said Gladstone in a statement on the new project, “One of the greatest gifts of making The Unknown Country with Morrisa Maltz was meeting the Bearkiller-Shangreaux family, and witnessing the unbridled, exuberant creative energy that Jasmine brings into every corner of her young life. Her gregarious confidence lent itself to the effortless story construction and improvisation that made the scenes work, and made all of us, who were relatively strangers, feel like immediate family.” She went on to express her gratitude for being able “to be part of Jasmine’s evolving story, to witness her creative match in her bestie Syriah, and to see our film-made family expand and deepen with the fantastic and inimitable JAZZY.”
Stated Bailey and Whalen of The Film Arcade, “After Morrisa and Miranda met at Bend Film Festival it sparked a fantastic collaboration on THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY and we are thrilled to be bringing her follow-up feature JAZZY to life. We are delighted to have Duplass Brothers Productions and Lily Gladstone coming on board this special film.”
Added Duplass Brothers Productions’ President, Eslyn, “We were already fans of THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY, but seeing what Morrisa was doing with JAZZY felt uniquely beautiful and important in its own right. Add Lily on top of that who we’ve worked with and love… it was an easy yes for us to come aboard.”
Earlier this year, Gladstone became the first Native American to score a Best Actress Oscar nomination, for her lead role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Previously, she won a Golden Globe for her work, also being named Best Actress of 2023 by the New York Film Critics Circle and The National Board of Review. Also recently seen on the acclaimed series Reservation Dogs and Billions, she’ll soon be seen in Erica Tremblay’s Sundance drama Fancy Dance, which has been picked up for distribution by Apple TV+, and has been set to star in Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel The Memory Police for director Reed Morano.
Prior to making her narrative directorial debut with The Unknown Country, Maltz helmed the feature doc Ingrid, which premiered on PBS, along with a number of shorts. Her art, film and performance work have been shown at MOCA, MCASB as well as galleries internationally.
Most recently, Duplass Brothers Productions took the pilot for its self-financed series Penelope to Sundance. The company last year released Eslyn’s first feature Biosphere, starring Sterling K. Brown and Mark Duplass, as well as HBO doc Last Stop Larrimah. Other upcoming releases for the company include Nnamdi Asomugha’s The Knife and the third season of popular HBO series Somebody Somewhere.
Gladstone is repped by Independent Artist Group, Authentic Talent and Literary Management, and McKuin Frankel Whitehead; Maltz by UTA and ColorCreative.
