'Killers of the Flower Moon' star Lily Gladstone was at deadCenter Film Festival. Catch up on the films she starred in

Although she hails from Montana, Lily Gladstone has spent much of the past few years working in Oklahoma.  

Judging from the enthusiastic reaction to the "Killers of the Flower Moon" star's arrival Sunday night at Oklahoma City's deadCenter Film Festival, many Oklahoma film fans are ready to make Gladstone an honorary Sooner State citizen. 

"It's been lovely. It's always just a great gift to be representing two films — and I care about both of them so much. Both filmmakers that are here at deadCenter were also guests of mine at Cannes (Film Festival in France) for the 'Killers of the Flower Moon' premiere. I'm very close with both of them. So, it's really exciting to be here, not just supporting the films they made that I love and am proud to be in, but supporting my good friends," Gladstone told The Oklahoman in an exclusive interview Sunday night at deadCenter.  

"Oklahoma's become very, very dear to me." 

Which films starring Lily Gladstone played at this year's deadCenter Film Festival? 

Both selections starring Gladstone, who is Blackfeet and Nimíipuu (or Nez Perce), won awards at this year's deadCenter Film Festival.  

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Directed by Geoff Marslett and filmed in Arizona, the time-travel Western "Quantum Cowboys" received deadCenter's special jury prize for best narrative feature. Also starring David Arquette, Kiowa Gordon and Gary Farmer, the inventive movie combines 8K and 16MM live-action and 12 different animation styles, from stop-motion to rotoscope.  

"'Quantum Cowboys' was fun. It's a multiverse story in a way that we're not used to seeing multiverse stories right now," Gladstone said. 

"We're essentially deconstructing the Western in a way, but challenging the worldview that is behind the typical John Ford, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne Westerns — and just doing it in a very new way that also overlaps with the world of physics." 

Selected as the deadCenter closing-night film, the drama "Fancy Dance," starring Gladstone and promising young newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson, was named best Indigenous feature and best narrative feature for deadCenter 2023.  

How did 'Reservation Dogs' mastermind Sterlin Harjo help connect Lily Gladstone to Oklahoma?

Gladstone also presented "Fancy Dance" director and co-writer Erica Tremblay with the deadCenter Oklahoma Film Icon Award ahead of the closing-night screening at First Americans Museum, where the movie's emotional final scenes were filmed.  

A Stillwater native and member of the Grove-based Seneca-Cayuga Nation, Tremblay was the first filmmaker to bring Gladstone to Oklahoma, to star in her short film "Little Chief," which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. 

Gladstone, 36, said she was willing to consider taking the lead role in Tremblay's "Little Chief" after she got a call from Sterlin Harjo, the Tulsa-based Seminole and Muscogee filmmaker behind the hit series "Reservation Dogs."  

"He called me because he was mentoring Erica and said that she wanted to cast me in her short. And I read the script, and it was just an immediate 'yes.' She's such a strong writer. She has such an impeccable voice that is delivered with such a light touch. And that's really hard to find in any filmmaker," Gladstone said.  

Wes Studi attends 'Fancy Dance' screening at deadCenter Film Fest 

Several Native American film luminaries with Oklahoma ties also attended the deadCenter "Fancy Dance" screening, including Oscar-honored Cherokee icon Wes Studi ("The Last of the Mohicans"), Comanche and Blackfeet film producer Jhane Myers ("Prey") and up-and-coming Comanche filmmaker Peshawn Bread, whose short mockumentary "The Daily Life of Mistress Red" also showed at deadCenter. 

Ahead of the OKC film fest, "Fancy Dance" premiered in January at Sundance in Utah and played in March at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. 

In the powerful drama, Gladstone plays Jax Goodiron, a Native American hustler scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma. Following her sister's disappearance, Jax becomes the primary caregiver for her 13-year-old niece, Roki (Deroy-Olson), until the girl's white grandparents apply for custody. Desperate to keep what is left of her family intact, Jax kidnaps Roki and sets out for a pivotal powwow in OKC. 

"Erica is brilliant, and her art doesn't really hit you over the head with it. But it lets you in, and that's how I like to work," Gladstone said.  

"She had a very specific idea in meeting and working with me of a different sort of character that she would want to create, to show a different, more fleshed out ... look into this incredibly horrific epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. And now (it's) very timely as we're awaiting the Supreme Court decision any day now about the Indian Child Welfare Act." 

'Fancy Dance' star calls it a 'very exciting and healing time' for Indigenous films and TV 

Gladstone and Tremblay reunited in Oklahoma last summer to film "Fancy Dance" in the Cherokee Nation. The film was one of the first recipients of the Cherokee Nation Film Incentive that launched in early 2022.   

The Montana native also returned to the Sooner State to play a soulful guest role on last year's second season of "Reservation Dogs," which films in and around Okmulgee. The critically acclaimed show's third season premieres Aug. 2 on Hulu. 

"It's just a testament to what we've been saying as Indigenous creators forever, but have been told otherwise: 'Your stories are niche, they're not going to appeal to everybody' (or) 'You're such a small percentage of population, so it's important, but we're not going to greenlight this because people won't get it.' People get it," said Gladstone, who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. 

"You don't have to be Native, you don't have to be from a rez to watch 'Rez Dogs,' to catch the humor, to really get it, to be challenged by it, to laugh with it, to cry with it." 

'Killers of the Flower Moon' actor earning Oscar buzz following Cannes premiere 

In between filming "Little Chief" with Tremblay in 2018 and reuniting with the filmmaker in Oklahoma last year, Gladstone spent several months of 2021 in and around Osage County working on Martin Scorsese's eagerly awaited fact-based saga "Killers of the Flower Moon."  

With its screenplay co-written by Scorsese and Oscar winner Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"), the film is an adaptation of David Grann's New York Times best-seller “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI." Like the National Book Award finalist, the film chronicles the slayings of Osage Nation citizens in 1920s Oklahoma, after the oil boom made them wealthy. The killings became known as the "Reign of Terror" and led to an investigation by the then-fledgling FBI.   

"Killers of the Flower Moon" centers on Mollie Kyle Burkhart (Gladstone), a real-life Osage woman who was targeted along her family during the Reign of Terror, and her relationship with her husband, Ernest Burkhart (Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio), who is caught between his love for his wife and a deadly plot masterminded by his uncle, William K. Hale (Oscar winner Robert DeNiro).  

The three-hour and 26-minute epic received a lengthy standing ovation at its May 20 world premiere at Cannes, and it's already earning Oscar buzz, especially for Gladstone, ahead of its October theatrical release.  

Outside First Americans Museum Sunday night, Tremblay joked that she would carry around her Oklahoma Film Icon Award "like someone I know will be doing soon with her Oscar."  

"I could stand here and fan girl about Lily Gladstone for hours. I think that while many are just going to be discovering Lily Gladstone, she's always been here, and she's been working since she was a young person," Tremblay told The Oklahoman.  

"I'm excited for everyone who will be blessed with her performances and her talent in their lives."