While Sydney Freeland didn’t always know she wanted to become a filmmaker, storytelling was a natural part of her identity. “I was surrounded by artists in traditional mediums like painting, drawing, weaving, pottery, silversmithing, stuff like that,” the Echo director remembers of her upbringing on a reservation in New Mexico. “Artists tell stories. They put themselves and their stories into that work.”

Freeland does just that in Rez Ball, which features a team of first-time and breakout performers, including Kauchani Bratt and Kusem Goodwind. In the coming-of-age drama, the Chuska Warriors basketball team is confronted with the underlying tragedies within their reservation community when their star player Nataanii (Goodwind) dies by suicide. As he deals with immense grief, Nataanii’s best friend Jimmy (Bratt) finds himself rallying his teammates to push through the pain and win the state championship.

The Drunktown’s Finest writer-director, who played basketball in high school herself, knew she wanted to revisit a world she was familiar with after reading a series of New York Times articles from sports writer Michael Powell on a phenomenon known as “rez ball,” a style of the sport that is ubiquitous throughout Native American communities. “For us, this is West Texas high school football,” Freeland recalls of the sport’s eminence on the reservation. “When I read it, and at this point I was probably 20 years removed from the reservation, I was like, Oh shit, this would make a good movie.”

With inspiration in tow, Freeland, alongside her co-writer Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs), crafted a new kind of underdog story, marrying the deeply personal with the universal. “This film is an invitation to see a side of America, to see a community that they may not be familiar with,” says Freeland of Rez Ball, which counts LeBron James as a producer. “But, for myself, for these kids, for the cast, for the crew, it’s something that we’ve lived and breathed [our] whole lives. Hopefully, we can expand people’s horizons just a little bit more.”

An edited version of the conversation follows.

Jenny Changnon: Where did the first kernel of the idea for Rez Ball come from? I know the New York Times articles were a jumping-off point, but what were some of the other experiences that inspired you and Sterlin Harjo?

Sydney Freeland: That was the catalyst. It sparked all these conversations between Sterlin and myself. We had wanted to work on something together for a while. The big thing for us was telling it from the inside out. It was like, Okay, the article’s an article, let’s set it aside. What are we going to do? We started drawing from our own experiences. I remember a couple games where we’d have police escorts. I remember a couple games we had snowballs with rocks thrown at the bus to get out of town. That’s how intense the rivalries were. I think a lot of that stems just from a geography standpoint. [On the reservation], we don’t have professional teams. We don’t have college teams. A lot of these Native teams have had the most success at the high school level, and so you get this huge turnout and this rabid fan base. This is Friday Night Lights, but from an Indigenous perspective. This, for us, [is] a very common experience, but most people aren’t as familiar with it.

Every actor in the film is just fascinating to watch, and a lot are first-time performers. What was that casting process like?

SF: I came up working with non-actors. I feel very comfortable working with first-time and non-actors, but a lot of the work that I’ve done since has been with more established people. So, for myself, it was both exciting and terrifying to return to that with these higher stakes of a bigger budget, of a bigger production. [I wondered] Can we find the kids to bring this film to life? I have to give a lot of credit to our casting director, Angelique Midthunder. We put out a casting call, and I think having LeBron James as an executive producer definitely helped because with that flyer with him on there we got five thousand submissions. It was very important for me that these kids could play basketball because nothing takes me out of a sports movie quicker than seeing someone who can’t play basketball. 

Then, people had to do the following: Not only did they have to put themselves on tape reading lines, but they also had to do three things. They had to shoot a free throw, shoot a layup, and shoot a three-pointer. We ended up bringing our top 32 actors — from all over the U.S., Canada, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Bay Area, the East Coast, the West Coast, the Southwest — out for what we called our Rez Ball invitational. We flew them out to Albuquerque. Over the course of the day, it was acting, it was callbacks, it was chemistry reads, it was line reads. The second half of the day was basketball camp. We worked with our basketball choreographer, and he ran through all these basketball drills, basketball scenarios, and some light choreography to see if they could handle it. And I have to say, these kids, I’m beyond blown away. They showed up in the best possible way. The proof is there onscreen.

How did you go about establishing that world of the reservation onscreen?

SF: A big thing for us was being able to shoot on the reservation. We had a lot of conversations earlier, like, “Well, can we do this all in Albuquerque? Can we do this all on a soundstage?” [The answer is] no, because the reservation has a very specific look. It has a very specific feel, and you can’t duplicate that. That texture — once you’re there in the environment — everything else comes from that. 

The film deals with complex topics like mental health. What was your approach to some deeply emotional subject matter as a filmmaker?

SF: I think that as [Sterlin and I] were talking and sharing our mutual experiences, we had these very, very profound losses that we had experienced with people dying by suicide in our communities. We were both initially very hesitant to approach that, but that hesitancy became, Well, maybe this is something we should look into and pay attention to. We don’t want to glorify it. We want to capture what this feels like in the community. Losing somebody that young has a seismic effect. A lot of our players, unfortunately, had experienced very similar things as well. It was really about just approaching it with dignity, with respect.

What was the most challenging or exciting scene to shoot as a filmmaker?

SF: From just a pure excitement level, it was the basketball. I wanted to get out there with them, and I wanted to play. I was like, Man, I’m too old. Seeing them just explode on the court with their skills and what they can do was so fun to watch and so exciting. [With the choreography], all this stuff has to go right. In the end, you’ve got to shoot a three-pointer and make it. And when you make it, it’s the best feeling in the world.