Will Oldham

Between this and Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, Will Oldham was for a moment the face of male bonding in independent American cinema. In Rick Alverson’s empathetic film about the emotional aftereffects of serving in the war on terror, his amiably, comically persistent character hammers home tenderness.

After 12 years away, Kelly Reichardt returned to independent filmmaking with this small scale but beguiling portrait of two men, no longer young, not quite old, trying to resume a friendship. With a lush Oregon setting and precise social detail—a director hallmark—she made a road movie in miniature.

Caveh Zahedi approaches songwriter Will Oldham with the proposition of taking psychedelic mushrooms together. Will accepts. Here is that journey.

Wendy Carroll is driving to Ketchikan, Alaska, in hopes of a summer of lucrative work at the Northwestern Fish cannery, and the start of a new life with her dog, Lucy. When her car breaks down in Oregon, however, the thin fabric of her financial situation comes apart, and she confronts a series of increasingly dire economic decisions, with far-ranging repercussions for herself and Lucy.

Set in a mining town in the 1880s, Nancy Kelly's feminist Western "Thousand Pieces of Gold" won immediate acclaim for its portrayal of the real-life story of Lalu (Rosalind Chao), a young Chinese woman who fought for independence and freedom in the Wild West after her desperately poor parents sold her into slavery.

A hired hand’s plans to eventually take over his boss’ farm are shattered when the landowner’s son returns to claim his birthright.