The Seventh Fire

An empathetic, often heartbreaking piece of work, at times tough to watch – one party scene is particularly grim and confrontational – at others calm and contemplative.

Riccobono neither condemns nor sympathises, maintaining a commendable neutrality, as his subjects frank testimony paves the way to jail cells.

This is spare-but-effective filmmaking.

The first couple of reels are very loosely structured, with no one identified onscreen, which gives the film a verite edge but which also means that it takes a good while for the material to find its footing and make it clear what and, more importantly, who, the film is exactly about.

The Seventh Fire is stirring for how it chips away at the relationship between hopelessness and helplessness.

A gruelling watch and a searing indictment of America's disregard for its indigenous peoples.

The documentary renders poverty a mysterious entity instead of a curable malady of systemic exclusion.