Frybread Face and Me

We often talk about making films that attempt to find the universal in the local. In the particularity of the Native American experience in Frybread lies the ubiquity of a larger human truth that keeps on echoing in the mind long after the film is over.

Luther’s film may be built on his own coming of age, but there’s both specificity and universality to this story, something for everyone who was ever a kid, Native or not, to connect with.

The movie is overfamiliar and earnest, but you can’t accuse it of not being heartfelt.

[The] film’s gentle approach to storytelling ... and unhurried affect imbues small moments with outsized significance.

Gentle comfort is something the entire world is in need of these days, and “Frybread Face and Me” delivers that in abundance.

Writer/director Billy Luther's warm, tender, and funny debut "Frybread Face and Me," which was executive produced by Taika Waititi, explores the humor and joy in finding your footing with family and the strength that comes from embracing your heritage.

But what director Billy Luther does in Frybread Face and Me goes beyond the apparent "city mouse" tropes to turn into something fresh and quietly moving.

The new coming-of-age film from Billy Luther, produced by ARRAY, asks the young Navajo protagonists to share their personal traumas and tragedies as well as those of their family members. Because of this weighty task, the film feels slightly uneven.

A wistful, warming tale from the Navajo rez, with Native wisdoms wafting, but also a Trojan horse for normalizing the gender-agenda.

Luther’s deft screenplay ably gets across a lot of complicated family business in just a few strokes. It’s also fun to see the analog jungle of boomboxes, VCRs, and Walkmans that comprised the lost world Gen Xers came up in.