I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this poignant documentary at the Prince Charles Cinema in London's West End yesterday. Sean Garland's NokotaHeart focuses on the plight of taciturn horse rancher Leo Kuntz and his struggle to preserve the bloodline of Sitting Bull's wild horses in the desolate badlands of North Dakota.
Kuntz is a man of few words and stubborn conviction, a frontiersman in a post-industrial America reminiscent of a Peckinpah protagonist. As he endures brutal winters and skates on the edge of financial ruin, Leo's lone struggle to preserve these horses - with no assistance from either the government or the Native American community - becomes deeply moving.
The film's tone darkens as Leo recalls his brushes with death in Vietnam, where he eerily received an identical wound as his hero Sitting Bull (a bullet in the left hip). Occasional jabs of dry humour relieve the bleak tone. "Us Kuntzes is born poor," Leo remarks with a pained grin, "and we damn well do our best to die poor."
The film is atmospherically photographed by director Sean Garland, who evokes a desolate beauty in the (sometimes snowswept) plains, suffusing the film in an elegiac magic hour glow. Special mention must also go to Patrick O'Hearn's delicate score and Lawrence Fee's taut editing.
NokotaHeart is ultimately a moving portrait of a shred of American history in danger of being lost forever. The film has already won awards on the festival circuit (including Best Feature Documentary at the White Sands International Film Festival) and I hope it gains the wide exposure necessary to highlight Leo's plight.