The 2025 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour arrives in Ashland Nov. 22 and Nov. 23, highlighting Native stories from across the globe
By Sydney Seymour, Ashland.news
The Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF) is hosting its November Monthly Film Series for two days, showcasing Indigenous filmmakers from around the world — including from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Philippines.
The deets:
Indigenous film screening, 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23 (sold out Saturday), Ashland Independent Film Festival Film Center, 389 E. Main Street. Order tickets here.
After selling out the 6:30 p.m. screening on Saturday, Nov. 22, at its film center, AIFF added a second date at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23.
An AIFF flyer for the event reads, “As we move into fall – a time of harvest, reflection, and gratitude – it felt fitting to showcase short films from Indigenous filmmakers.”
The event will display the 2025 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour, a 98-minute theatrical program featuring seven short films, both documentary and narrative.
The curated selection reflects Native stories and “inventive, original storytelling from Indigenous artists previously supported by the Festival,” the AIFF website reads. The tour features six films from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and one from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
While they suggest $12 per ticket, tickets are available on a sliding scale, or “pay what you can” basis.
Included in the program are the following:
- “Tiger” (2025): A portrait of award-winning, internationally acclaimed Indigenous artist and elder Dana Tiger, her family, and the resurgence of the iconic Tiger T-shirt company. (15 minutes)
- “Inkwo for When the Starving Return” (2024): Dove, a gender-shifting warrior, uses their Indigenous medicine, Inkwo, to protect their community from an unearthed swarm of terrifying creatures. (19 minutes)
- “Stranger, Brother.” (2025): When Adam, a self-absorbed and lonely millennial, wakes one morning to find his estranged half brother on his doorstep, he must face the family he’s been running away from. (15 minutes)
- “Field Recording” (2025): A meandering joke about three dreams. (3 minutes)
- “En memoria” (2024): In a dystopian future, a mother struggles to finish making her daughter’s quinceañera dress. (11 minutes)
- “Lea Tupu’anga / Mother Tongue” (2024): A young speech therapist disconnected from her Tongan heritage lies about her Tongan language skills to get a job. Out of her depth, she must find a way to communicate or risk her patient’s life. Languages: English, Tonga (17 minutes)
- “Vox Humana” (2024): An eccentric biologist interrogates a wild man who was found in the forest after an earthquake hit a small mountain town. Language: Tagalog (22 minutes)
Email Ashland.news reporter Sydney Seymour at [email protected].
