‘War Pony’ Directors Riley Keough, Gina Gammell Talk Cannes Premiere, Making Art and Seeing Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’
variety.comK.J. Yossman When “War Pony” debuts in Cannes on May 21, it will represent the culmination of a project almost a decade in the making.
Directed by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, and written by Keough, Gammell, Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, the film about two boys growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota took seven years from conception to post-production.Protagonist Picture is handling international sales on the project while CAA Media Finance is repping North America.“It was a very slow burn,” Keough says of the film. “Because we didn’t really have a clear intention for many years.”Keough met Reddy and Sioux Bob, who both grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, when they were extras on Andrea Arnold’s 2016 feature “American Honey,” in which Keough starred.
When a scene featuring the trio got delayed by six hours, they had nothing else to do but hang out, becoming fast friends in the process.
Keough then introduced Reddy and Sioux Bob to Gammell, another longtime friend (one so close Keough describes their friendship as “kind of like twins; we finish each other sentences”) and soon the foursome, all in their early twenties and “interested in making art,” began experimenting with music, films, VR shorts, music videos and writing.“And one day we realized we had a story going,” Keough recalls. “A full narrative that could be finessed into something that made sense.
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