Dallas Film Now.

The festival’s track record of programming insightful and moving true stories of Native American life/culture has always been a high point and Sky Hopinka’s Powwow People is no exception. First and foremost, the film looks and sounds incredible and is designed to envelope the viewer within a culture that holds music and movement in equal serenity.

Recording a week-long event in Washington State where various tribes come together to eat, drink, dance and participate in contested events, Powwow People is the type of documentary that gets lost nowadays. But Hopinka’s love for tradition and culture is overwhelming, and his film (he serves as editor and director) is full of moments both grand and molecular. Much focus is given on the gyrating penultimate powwow dance, but it’s a film that gives just as much emotional weight to the clasped hands of an onlooking parent and child. There’s also a staggering long take (5-6 minutes)- timed at sunset with breaking colors of orange and blue in the sky, the camera travels slowly along the perimeter of one of the dance ceremonies, weaving in and out on the faces of vendors and people blissfully wandering around before shifting back to the moving bodies in ceremonial dress at the other end of the park. It’s a seemingly small flourish that not only seems to capture the free-flowing energy of the event, but it succinctly records the logistics of people enjoying a fusion of light, sound, and dance. It also makes us feel like we’re included.

Outside of the visual panache, Powwow People is informative. It doesn’t play by the generic documentary rules, incorporating disembodied voiceovers (although we know who’s speaking), carefully composed images, and very little history about who or what we’re observing (besides the nuggets of humor or history tossed out by the MC Ruben Little Head).It thrusts the viewer into an actual powwow ceremony and allows the ritual to speak for itself. I adore this type of film, and Hopinka gives us just enough to be entertained, informed, and even philosophical, such as when one of the participants- a trans nonbinary named Jamie John- wonders aloud what the future holds for his culture. If festivals like Dallas and others around the country continue to program and recognize films like this, hopefully all cultures will remain permanent.

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It’s hard to fathom that If I Go Will They Miss Me is a debut film. Yes, it’s expanded from writer-director Walther Thompson-Hernandez’s Sundance winning short film of the same name, but it’s so assured…. so lyrical…. and one of the most humanistic films I’ve seen in a long time. Everything is perfect.

Filmed and dedicated to the people of Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts – directly under the noisy path of LAX where flying, escaping, and looking up at winged wonders will be a huge trope- the film focuses on the tenuous relationship between Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and his young son Little Ant (Bodhi Dell). Newly released from prison, the struggle of father and son is complicated by Big Ant’s expectation of masculinity and Lil Ant’s proclivity for art and drawing, which doesn’t sit well with his father. In one of the more quietly devastating scenes that speaks volumes about the disconnect between the two, Big Ant mutters “boy, stop drawing me” to his son. It’s not said with threat or malice, but with the sense of diminished belief in anything outside the margins of what a man should be. Clearly, Lil Ant’s creativity is a threat that will serve as the basic conflict for the rest of this stunning film. And don’t even ask what happens to the paper mache unicorn Lil Ant and family builds later on.

Observing this strained relationship at the margins is mother Lozita (a tremendous Danielle Brooks). She’s protective and wants the relationship between absent-father and son to develop, but Big Ant’s decisions and actions towards the family continually cause rifts. Slipping back into the vagrant lifestyle that once got him in so much trouble, Brooks plays Lozita with heart and understated anger at the ways Big Ant fails everyone.

Nothing in If I Go Will They Miss Me takes a direct path. Previous films about African American life in settings like this typically go in one direction. This film is more than that. There’s an aching wisdom to the way some scenes play out. Music and image detonate in a wondrous orchestra. People say tremendously graceful things one minute, then do something horrific the next. There’s poetic realism. There’s harsh reality. Basically life. Not only is If I Go Will They Miss Me a monumental piece of independent cinema, but the type of film I hope and pray will be discovered at a film festival and go on to light up hearts and minds around the world.

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It was noted by a filmgoing companion of mine that children in peril seems to be a bigger trope than usual at this year’s festival. Although they saw about 8 films more than I did (to my 19), I would agree with that even in my abbreviated sample size.

One such film, Seyhmus Altun’s film As We Breathe, also places children at the center of danger when a chemical fire slowly burns towards their Anatolian country-side house, causing not only health problems to a small family already struggling to survive, but the real danger of evacuation.

The family, consisting of father (Hakan Karsak) and four children ranging from ages 5 to 14, decide to disobey the orders of evacuation and stick it out, even though Grandma (Sacide Tasaner) develops coughing spells that knock her out for days and the oldest son is plagued by constant nosebleeds. Despite these ominous signposts, As We Breathe hints at the oncoming apocalypse in small gestures. Cow’s milk becomes bloody. The shadow of smoke is ever-present just off the edge of frame in the sky. But the family pushed on, and filmmaker Altun ratchets things up slowly, but at times too slowly.

Filmed mostly through the vantage point of father Mehmet’s determination to stay in his home and enveloping confusion this causes ten-year-old Esma (Defne Zeynep Enci), As We Breathe suffers from inertia. More of a day-in-the-life of this particular family, the film is never boring, but it just lacks a spark of conflict. I did admire a third act moment that’s so literally on-the-nose about the act of breathing that it almost feels like caricature.

The 2026 Dallas International Film Festival concluded on Thursday April 30th.