Sydney Freeland has lined up her third feature. Deadline reports that she’ll follow up 2014’s “Drunktown’s Finest” and 2017’s “Deidra & Laney Rob a Train” with “Rez Ball,” a Netflix coming-of-age pic that’s described as “‘Friday Night Lights’ meets ‘Hoosiers.'”
“Rez Ball” looks inside “the raw and exhilarating world of ‘reservation basketball’ with its unique, lightening-quick pace that is rumored to have influenced top NBA teams and coaches throughout the years,” the source details. “It follows the Chuska Warriors, a Native American high school basketball team from Chuska, New Mexico that must band together after losing their star player, if they want to keep their quest for a state championship alive. It’s an all-American underdog story about Navajo kids and coaches, told from the inside-out.”
“Basketball on the Rez is like high school football in West Texas. It has a fanatical following that few sports can rival,” Freeland explained. She emphasized that it is “a story that’s commonplace on Indian reservations all over the U.S., but most people aren’t even aware it exists. What we want to do is bring people into our world, to tell a story about the people and places we know, and what better way to do that than through a sports movie? We want to tell a story that is authentic to the place and people, told from the inside-out. We are so excited with the team we’ve assembled and can’t wait to bring this to the screen.”
Freeland penned the script with Sterlin Harjo, the co-creator “Reservation Dogs,” a new FX series that centers on four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma. Freeland directed multiple episodes of the comedy.
Deadline notes that “production will take place in New Mexico, and will entail filming on reservations, with the permission and support of local sovereign tribal nations.”
A member of the Navajo Nation, Freeland’s TV credits include “Rutherford Falls,” “P-Valley,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” When we asked what advice she’d give other women directors, she urged, “Learn to accept rejection. You will be rejected more than you are accepted. However, try to learn to use it as an opportunity to make your project better.”
