‘Frybread Face & Me’ Director Billy Luther & EP Taika Waititi On SXSW Debut, Original Stories, ‘Star Wars,’ Savvy Audiences, & Expanding Horizons
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: “I’ve told stories about my community and stuff, but this is, this is my story,” declares Frybread Face and Me director Billy Luther of his Taika Waititi executive produced feature debut.
Premiering tonight at SXSW, the long gestating drama from the Miss Navajo helmer is a 1990-set coming-of-age tale of San Diego reared Benny and the summer he is sent to live with his grandmother and other family on a Navajo reservation in Arizona.
The summer becomes all the more significant for the doll-playing and Fleetwood Mac obsessed Benny as the city kid gradually befriends his cousin Dawn a.k.a.
Frybread, and learns of not only his own family history through her, but that of his Indigenous culture too. Spawned out the Sundance Institute labs and financed in part by Charles D King’s Macro, along with River Road and REI Co-op Studios, have teamed with Chad Burris’ Indion Entertainment, the Luther penned and directed Frybread defines expectations at almost every turn.
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