Review: 'Drunktown's Finest' opens world's eyes to Navajo life

Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest is a touching story about three lives that for all intents and purposes would never collide with one another, but when they look within themselves and their roots, the similarities become hard to avoid. Freeland’s tale of ambition and drive within a life of hard knocks follows a transexual, Felixia (the powerful Carmen Moore), the hard boy who is trying to change his life around, Sickboy (played by Jeremiah Bitsui) and Nizhoni (Morning Star Wilson), a girl who lost her parents at an early age and was adopted by a middle class white couple. Drunktown’s Finest is a wonderful look at a group of people who are otherwise rarely represented in cinema; looking at the Native American tribes that continue to exist to this day.

The three stories of the film are kept separate for the majority of the film; Felixia dreams of becoming a model of the Navajo calendar but she just hopes that the judges do not find out that she is a transexual. She is promiscuous and trying all she can do to find her own place in the world – she has a handle over technology and finds men to sleep with through social media. Her conversations with these random men are illustrated on screen by Freeland, and they open up Felixia’s headspace a little for the audience. She lives with her grandparents on a reserve, where the tribesmen and women live, but they are accepting and aware of Felixia’s lifestyle. Her grandfather, a wise man, tells her of a third gender alongside men and women, that they acknowledge and see as powerful – he is telling Felixia that it is okay to be herself. Whilst she gets through to the final round for the calendar, a fellow model who knows her past, decides to out her to everyone.