“I do believe in abundance, and I believe when you come from that perspective, you’re given beautiful opportunities,” said actress Jessica Matten. In this case, the opportunity that Matten is speaking about is her latest Hollywood project, Rez Ball.
The Netflix film is about a high school basketball team in the heart of the New Mexican Chuska reservation. Early in their season, the group is challenged in a way that will affect the rest of their lives. Do they cry foul for the entire season or step to the line and shoot for the state championship? Despite the Disney-like logline, rest assured this film has some very adult, heavy topics.
The topic up for discussion the morning Latina Media Co spoke with Matten and her co-stars Kauchani Bratt (Jimmy Holiday) and Devin Sampson-Craig (Bryson Badonie) was about representation. The trio – fresh off their Toronto International Film Festival premiere just hours before, was all about gratitude.
“I know it’s been the trend to take the negative approach, but my entire career, I actually never really emphasized that,” says Matten. “I think that’s why I’ve been very fortunate to have so much abundance in my career. And you know, working for 10 years straight has been a blessing.” The Canadian actress (most known for her work on Dark Winds) has worked to further the Indigenous community. In Rez Ball, she is Heather Hobbs, a former WNBA player turned high school basketball coach. Not only must her character claw her way out of a deficit in the professional department, but she must also find a way to inspire and lead a group of teenage boy basketball players.
The Netflix film is based on the 2015 NY Times story “Games on a Reservation Go By in a Blur” and the subsequent book. The film doesn’t just dribble lightly into the Native American culture, it goes all in. Until recently Hollywood has largely, if not completely, ignored Indigenous communities. Thankfully, Rez Ball is part of a new wave of Native-led projects. “I’m just grateful to be a part of this film. The movement and the exposure that a project like this is going to get,” says Matten.
For newbies Kauchani Bratt and Devin Sampson-Craig, the entire experience began with community. “Before we had even shot the film, we all gathered together and took a sweat lodge together and really prayed about it,” says Bratt. The nephew of veteran Hollywood actor Benjamin Bratt took that traditional practice very seriously. “We went about it and set the intentions about what we’re trying to do. And really just try to go about it in a good way.”
We have to imagine the task was made easier by having the beautiful New Mexican Native land serve as your baseline backdrop. “The Pueblo lands and the Navajo lands that we were on were pretty beautiful,” said Sampson-Craig. “I’m the type to really get scared and nervous about the desert. But I enjoyed it very, very much.”
Overall Rez Ball scores big. And not just in the Indigenous community. Rez Ball is the type of film that decades from now we can look back and say this got it right. The film captures a purity and reverence found in Native communities the world over. And it doesn’t shy away from heavy topics like alcoholism, suicide, or incarceration, but it doesn’t glorify them either. Rather, Rez Balle embraces the harsh truths of the communities it portrays while giving reverence to what they hold dear.
Rez Ball is directed by Sydney Freeland and produced by Lebron James. It’s available on Netflix now.
