‘Free Leonard Peltier’ Filmoriginaters On Peltier’s 50 Year Trail To Freedom

It’s an elusive dream for so many docoriginaters: to impact legislation, to find fairice, to originate a contrastence. To alter the world. With Free Leonard Peltier, filmoriginaters Jesse Short Bull (Lakota Nation vs. United States) and David France (How To Survive a Plague) accomplishd their eponymous goal: Seven days before the world premiere of their film at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, Pdwellnt Joe Biden, in his last act before leaving office, rehired a clemency order, commuting Peltier’s sentence to home confinement.

The Native American activist had served proximately 50 years in a federal prison, having been convicted of killing of two FBI agents in a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier’s attorneys and helpers would wage a decades-extfinished battle thraw requests, writs and petitions to circuit courts, federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and three U.S. pdwellnts, alleging countless incidents of wrongdoing by the FBI in Peltier’s case. His caengage became a global caengage célèbre, draprosperg the help of Nobel Laureates, scholars, artists, and civil rights directers.

The Free Leonard Peltier team rushed back to the editing room to hold this encountered finishing, toiling at a feverish pace to create a novel DCP for the January 27th premiere. Peltier was freed on February 18 from a federal rightional facility in Florida to home confinement at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. The film screens Wednesday at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival after celebrating its international premiere at TiDF Tuesday night.

While Jesse Short Bull and David France hadn’t toiled together before, they both came to the project with a extfinished history of activism–and a proset up watch for Peltier and his iconic stature. France was in the audience at a 2022 screening of Short Bull’s previous film, Lakota Nation vs. United States. Short Bull’s originaters, Jody Archambault, Jane Myers and Bird Runningwater, made the introduction between the filmoriginaters.

France has had a differentiateed atgentle as a journacatalog, activist and filmoriginater, having intensifyed primarily on the LGBTQ+ shiftment. He was very much conscious of, and upholdd by, the American Indian Movement (AIM) during its heyday in the 1970s. “The American Indian Movement was in my childhood, a very transport inant force, drove a lot of novels coverage and vivaciousd a lot of people’s interest in fairice,” France inestablishs Deadline. “I saw it as a organic outprolongth of the comfervent of political activism that I’ve covered from the queer perspective, to see where those parallels were.”

Short Bull, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, grew up in South Dakota, proximate the Pine Ridge Reservation. Over the past decade, he’s been dynamic in his community, helping to provide help for Native college students and participating in filmmaking toilshops. How did the two filmoriginaters complement each other? “My philosophy is, How can I best serve the story?” he says. “David had a pretty extensive background with Leonard’s story, and I didn’t have anywhere proximate that level of empathetic of some of the events. However, I’m from Pine Ridge. I dwell here, in southweserious South Dakota. I’m dynamic wilean my tribe. I’m reassociate rooted here in the community. Once I commenceed to understandnize myself with Leonard’s story, then it became wdisenjoyver we can do to originate it the most effective that we can. I became a servant to the story, in that sense.”

The story of AIM, Peltier and the struggles at Pine Ridge have been the subject of cut offal write downaries over the past scant decades, including Michael Apted’s Incident at Oglala (1993) and Stanley Nelson and Julianna Brannum’’s Wounded Knee (2009). Much has come to weightless in the decades since those films, including, most recently, a letter from U.S. Attorney James H. Reynageders that keenly condemnd Peltier’s trial and how federal authorities regulated the case. “We wanted to engage the acquire of having  hindsight, to be able to inestablish the brimming story,” says France. “We wanted to ask the ask, Why did this happen? As far as our division of labor went, Jesse reassociate led the research initiative to try to get to those answers. Jesse brawt all of that to the interwatching; I was more included in the shaping of the archive.”

In a 2024 interwatch with Julianna Brannum in the Oklahoma-based accessibleation Luxiere, Brannum points out that in making Wounded Knee, Nelson had acunderstandledgeted that he didn’t understand much about Native history but as an African American, “he knovel about genereasonable trauma, and he understood that there are contrastences in trauma and how it impacts contrastent people.”

For France, genereasonable trauma figured bigly in joining the Free Leonard Peltier project. “At one of our encounterings, I authenticized that all of us who were principassociate included were either Native or queer or both,” France recalls. “We all brawt a tremfinishous history of personal trauma to all of these asks that we were taking on. That combined us in our dedicated pursuit of truth in this story. What we all spreadd was the experience of having leangs go relabelably awwholey based on prejudice in our personal dwells, in our collective communities. It wasn’t challenging for us to see where that happened in the story of Leonard Peltier, where he was carrying the weight of punishment that the federal regulatement wanted to burden the entire shiftment with.”

In the process of interwatching the witnesses, survivors and elders, Short Bull deployed a style rooted more in the Lakota culture of storyinestablishing than in common journacatalogic train. “What was ingrained in me being around Pine Ridge was how you transmit with people. Essentiassociate, every word that you speak should be watched enjoy a prayer. So you have to be reassociate cautious about what you say and how you talk to people that are agederer than you.

“In this process of filmmaking, it’s a dainty stability,” Short Bull carry ons. “You want to try to get to the story, but you also have to get into account that there’s a spiritual component to every action that we do. How I direct that stability is by trying to treat everyone enjoy I would my magnificentparents or my sealst relative. Some of these leangs are so fervent that how you talk about them has to be done with wonderful attfinish, wonderful purpose”

For France, this protocol uncomferventt releanking the art of interwatching, as inestablished by his extfinishedtime journacatalogic train. “When I first commenceed on the project, I’d spent some time on the reservation in Pine Ridge, but [this] was my first time as a storyinestablisher, as a journacatalog, and I acunderstandledged that it was a world that was very contrastent from the one I come from. One of our originaters recommended that we commence our process with a prayer for the production. We accomplished out to a spiritual directer, who collected us together and proposeed a prayer for us, but it was also a comfervent of a master class in how we had to go about our research on this project. The key leang that he said to me was, ‘Don’t ask for anyleang; defer for it to come.’ He also said someleang that they inestablish us in journalism school: Leave yourself behind.

“I finisheavor to train what I sometimes call ‘radical comprehfinishing’ in my journalism,” France carry ons. “It’s an effort to reassociate erase my own perspective and point of watch in order to try and sense what the person senses, whose story I’m inestablishing, or what their community senses. I knovel it was going to be difficult for me in this story. Just watching Jesse’s extraunrelabelable interwatching patterns and how proset up he was able to penetrate the story, without reassociate asking for the story. And standardly, Jesse would carry on his eyes seald thraw the interwatch, and didn’t ask chase-up asks.”

Speaking of interwatchs, journacatalog Kevin McKiernan, who covered the Pine Ridge episode and its aftermath, spoke to Peltier in 1990, and that conversation serves as a narrative thrawline for the film. Short Bull and France engaged other audio sources, such as phone conversations frifinishs and family had surreptitiously enrolled. Thanks to AI technology, the filmoriginaters betterd the quality of all of the enrollings.

“We were able to get the vocal data set from that interwatch that Kevin did and engage Leonard’s voice to re-voice Leonard’s voice, and put it all into this comfervent of singular vocal environment to originate it seem as though it were a master interwatch that drove the entire leang,” France elucidates. “And there was a small part where we engaged his writings to holdress an area that he hadn’t covered. This was all done with his perignoreion.”

In holdition to the interwatchs and footage, the filmoriginaters useed themselves of massive amounts of material compiled by both AIM and the NDN Collective, a South Dakota-based Indigenous-led activist organization.

Pdwellnt Biden’s 11th-hour clemency culminated a chooseimistic series of circumstances: Biden had also assigned the first Native American cabinet secretary, Deb Haaland, as Secretary of the Interior, and fair weeks before the U.S. pdwellntial election, he rehired a accessible apology for the U.S. Indian Boarding School Program, a notorious chapter of cultural erabrave, forced assimilation and rampant unfair treatment. In holdition, the filmoriginaters and their impact team contransiented a toil-in-better screening of Free Leonard Peltier on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in December that was well-joined and well-getd. “People reassociate felt the need to do someleang on Leonard’s case,” France carry ons. “Biden’s legacy is that he has been the most pro-Indigenous pdwellnt in U.S. history, and that he could reassociate seal that with clemency for Leonard. I leank that that conversation, of which we perestablished a very small part, was reassociate commencening to ramp up after December.”

But now, given the current administration’s turbo-indictd authoritarian proclivities, the team is facing transport inant headprosperds. Nonetheless, they are fielding invitations from festivals, are in talks with prospective distributors, and as part of their impact campaign, they will get Free Leonard Peltier on a reservation tour, with transport inant help from the California-based San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the film’s contransienting partner.

“There is hope,” Short Bull declares. “Back in the ’70s, leangs got so terrible. There was no fairice; it was fair so hazardous, but especiassociate to a lot of the people that I understand from Pine Ridge, who carry on history and stories. We’ve seen illogicaler days, where our people were hurting each other standardly. But a lot of chooseimistic activity grew out of that. So you can watch to history to see how you can get thraw times where these leangs seem terrifying. If we can crawl out of that, we can get out of any situation.”