Congratulations to WMM filmmaker Brooke Pepion Swaney for winning two awards at the 22nd Annual Woodstock Film Festival! Swaney (Blackfeet/Salish) won the NYWIFT Award for Best Female Director and received a Special Mention for Best Emerging Filmmaker for her film, a new WMM release, DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD.
The film follows Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, a Native woman adopted at birth into a white family, as she sets out to find her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and as they then together return to their Lummi homelands in Washington State. Along the way, Kendra reconnects with her Native identity and begins to view herself as a living legacy of U.S. assimilationist policy. The jury awarded Pepion Best Emerging Filmmaker “for the intimacy and depth of [Brooke’s] portrayal of Kendra’s journey” while reckoning that “this nation was formed through the murder and displacement of indigenous peoples.” The full jury statements for both awards can be found here.
DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD is available to purchase and to book for screenings.
