Director: Sydney Freeland
Writer: Sydney Freeland, Sterlin Harjo, Michael Powell
Stars: Kusem Goodwind, Kauchani Bratt, Jessica Matten
Synopsis: The Chuska Warriors, a Native American high school basketball team from New Mexico, must band together after losing their star player if they want to keep their quest for a state championship alive.
“What are the rules of Rez Ball? Run fast. Shoot fast. Don’t ever stop.”
Basketball films are popular with Black communities as narratives that can be both realistic in their representation of communities beset with poverty and social issues and function as aspirational stories. The underdog tale of a sports team taking on more than the barriers presented by their lived circumstances to find a sense of pride in themselves, and their community is not new – but there is a reason some tropes work and work well. Rez Ball shifts the story from urban environments to a Navajo reserve in New Mexico. It’s not ‘the projects’ but it is a place where a Native people have been partially ‘relegated’ and ghettoized with their identity tied to generational trauma and tribal pride – the two often becoming deeply intertwined.
Two teens are playing basketball on an open court. Cheered by the family of one, they are as brothers. Naatanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind) and Jimmy Holliday (Kauchani Bratt) are the Batman and Robin of the Chuska Braves high school basketball team. That golden moment where the two play one-on-one is in the past. Naatanii’s mother and sister were killed in a drunk driving accident, and it has been a year since that moment occurred. Now seniors at Chuska, Naatanii and Jimmy are the lynchpins of the state title hopes for the school team coached by former Chuska reservation star player Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten).
Naatanii and Jimmy move in sync on the court – their plays borne out of years of closeness. Jimmy spent as much time as he could with the Jackson family and when Naatanii lost his mom Lily and his younger sister, he did everything he could to fill in the empty space. The whole community is behind Naatanii, but no one sees the young man is slipping into a depression. After the game (which they win – but not without getting a yelling at by Coach Hobbs for showboating) Jimmy and Naatanii go to the cistern overlooking part of the rez. “Do you ever think about getting out?” Naatanii asks Jimmy. “From the Rez? Yeah of course,” he replies. “No like really getting out, for good.”
Jimmy assumed Naatanii was talking about being scouted for college ball – that’s what he believed were their shared goals. Jimmy’s life on the rez doesn’t have much going on beyond basketball. His mom, Gloria (Julia Jones) is unemployed and an addict who expects him to pick up shifts at the local Lotaburger to support them. She doesn’t want Jimmy playing basketball because it will just give him the idea that he can go further than he is ‘allowed’ to. Jimmy and Naatanii were the dynamic duo shooting for the stars, but then Naatanii is gone – he suicides, and Jimmy and the whole of Chuska have lost another light. One of many who are snuffed out on the rez.
Director Sydney Freeland and writer Sterling Harjo don’t shy away from the problems of life on the rez. The young basketballers are, in Coach Hobbs’ words, just kids. They’re stars on the court but outside of that their lives are filled with limited expectations and statistically limited lifespans. Heather Hobbs doesn’t particularly want to be back there either. She’s applying for coaching jobs anywhere else, and her girlfriend breaks up with her. But she realizes she has a chance to pull the team together (now failing awfully on and off the court after the loss of Naatanii) by connecting them to the resilience and power of their native heritage. They are going to play Rez Ball, and they are going to win.
Heather brings in her own coach from her high school days, Benny Begay (Ernest Tsosie III), now a line cook, to get the team into shape. She shows them that they need to learn to play fast with a shot clock, to keep the ball moving, and pits them against the girls’ team who kick their butts. Jimmy has inherited the bittersweet mantle of captain which he doesn’t particularly know how to use, and he finds himself up against wild-card Bryson Badonie (Devin Sampson-Craig). Bryson is a teen dad he and his girlfriend Dezbah (Amber Midthunder) don’t get Jimmy’s dourness and lack of pride in his background. “You act like a city Native,” Bryson tells him.
There is one person Jimmy bonds with – his co-worker Krista (Zoey Reyes) who is fiercely protective of the Navajo language and honoring Native traditions. What Bryson and others don’t see is how depressed Jimmy’s mom Gloria is and how when she gave up her own dreams of playing college basketball (she was Heather’s teammate) she decided, “That’s the thing about natives. No matter how hard we try, we always find a way to lose. It’s in our blood.”
Jimmy and the team are spiralling down. Nine consecutive losses seem like the death knell for state titles and Jimmy’s dreams, but Coach Hobbs and Coach Begay are not about to give up on the team and the young men coming of age within it.
Through one of the best team building exercises which involves Heather’s great aunt and her sheep farm – the Chuska Warriors begin to see that they have skills other teams don’t have. Jimmy and Bryson work together as co-captains to herd sheep into an enclosure. The rest of the team (all played wonderfully by the various actors) have what they have been missing on the court – fun. It’s a breakthrough moment for them, but it isn’t the end of the arguments, nor the self-discoveries and personal victories.
While Jimmy is figuring out basketball and life without Naatanii, Gloria realizes she’s losing Jimmy completely. She reaches out to Naatanii’s dad, Raymond (Ryan Begay), for a job cleaning in his garage. Raymond has lost everything; his two children and his wife. He’s a former alcoholic and can see Gloria’s genuine desire to be a mother to her son. Because of DUIs, she can’t work off the rez. He becomes Gloria’s support network.
Rez Ball aims to be accessible through the sports narrative and the coming of age and mending broken relationships stories – and it is. The accessibility of the story is the Trojan Horse for the film to engage in issues impacting upon Native communities across North America. Freeland and Harjo don’t judge their characters and how they each view what being Native and living on the rez means. It’s both beautiful and terrible – a place to belong, a place to learn, a place where people can grow and also where some suffocate and wither. Through the languages of basketball and Navajo there is an intertwining of identity and keeping hope alive with tradition.
Rez Ball is wonderfully scripted. Funny, ironic, and bursting with the possibility of the future. It recognizes the scars of the past and how they inform the present – and superbly gives voice to several generations and their struggles. To quote Jimmy, “Stoodis!” Watch Rez Ball and be transported.