It's starting to look like Minnesota is taking over the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. In addition to Minneapolis' Riverview Theater being selected as a remote site for the Jan. 28-Feb. 3 virtual festival, a Minnesota filmmaker has been announced of one of ten competing for its top prizes.
Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.'s "Wild Indian," about a man reckoning with a crime he committed as a youth, will compete with nine other titles, including "Passing," the feature directing debut of actor Rebecca Hall, and "On the Count of Three," with Tiffany Haddish. "Wild Indian's" cast includes Jesse Eisenberg, Kate Bosworth and Phoenix Wilson.
A member of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe and a graduate of the University of Minnesota, Corbine also has been named one of Variety's "10 Directors to Watch" for 2021. Having grown up on reservations in Wisconsin and Minnesota and received a $25,000 McKnight fellowship in 2018, he told Filmmaker Magazine that his filmmaking goal is to use "prototypical Native imagery but do it through my own visual language, my own voice."
Corbine's short films, "Shinaab" and "Shinaab, Part II" appeared at both the Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance. "Wild Indian" is his first feature.
Chris Hewitt • 612-673-4367