Following its win of the prestigious Caméra d’Or award at Cannes Film Festival, War Pony, the directorial debut by Gina Gammell and Riley Keough, has just received another accolade – The Louis Roederer Foundation Revelation Prize at Deauville American Film Festival.
The award was sponsored by Louis Roederer Foundation and aims to recognise an original work by a promising filmmaker.
Set within the vast Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, War Pony follows two young Oglala Lakota boys as they struggle with identity, family and adulthood, while also dealing with heavy burdens of society.
After being awarded the Caméra d’or in the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, War Pony won the support of two juries of the Deauville Festival by receiving the Louis Roederer Foundation Revelation Prize – from the Revelation Jury presided by Elodie Bouchez – and the Jury Prize – from the official jury presided by Arnaud Desplechin.
Born in 1988 in London, Gina Gammell started out producing and directing music videos and commercials. In 2018, she founded the production company Felix Culpa with the actress Riley Keough.
Born in 1989 in Los Angeles, grand-daughter of Elvis Presley, Riley Keough is a known actress for her roles in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016), Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky (2017), Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built (2018) or Antonio Cam-pos’ The Devil All the Time (2020).
The two wrote and directed together their first feature film based on true stories, that highlights struggling teenagers from a Native American community. It’s a heartfelt and absorbing story about two young guys from the Oglala Lakota community, one about 12 or 13, the other 19 or 20. Bound by their shared search for belonging, each of the boys grapple with identity, family, and loss, as they navigate their unique paths to manhood.
The Revelation Jury was presided by actress Elodie Bouchez, accompanied by pluridisciplinary actress Yolande Zauberman, filmmaker Nicolas Pariser, actresses Andrea Bescond and Agathe Rousselle, and writer-composer-actor Eddy de Pretto.
The Louis Roederer Foundation was founded in 2011 with the purpose of perpetuating Louis Roederer’s sponsorship activity which followed on from its discovery of the photography collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in 2003.
True to its long time commitment to provide a springboard for up-and-coming talent, the Louis Roederer Foundation is demonstrating its patronage of the Seventh Art through its partnership with this Festival, which recognizes and promotes the new faces of American cinema.
