With SeedsCanadian Mohawk actor Kaniehtiio Horn has embraced the indigenous horror-thriller genre, with a dash of comedy.
“I didn't want to make a traumatic film,” he said. Reserve Dogs the actor tells The Hollywood Reporter on her directorial debut, a genre-bending home invasion film that she wrote, stars in, and produces. And she wants audiences at its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival to laugh.
Heartily. And in the right places. Horn says laughter is abundant in indigenous culture and communities, no matter how diverse the tribes and language groups. This is mostly laughing with, not being laughed at: “Oh my God, we're funny! We can make fun of each other, but it's always in a provocative way. It's always in a loving way.”
And before writing the Seeds script, Horn never thought about stepping into the director's chair. But after playing the Deer Lady on the FX series Reserve Dogs and Tanis on Hulu LettersKennyHorn grew tired of waiting for someone to give her a leading role.
“I really wanted to prove that I could direct a movie,” he says. Fellow Canadian Jacob Tierney and other friends quickly put to rest his doubts about directing his script. “I felt like everyone else believed in me more than I did. So I thought, 'OK, I'll direct it,'” Horn adds. Seedswhere he originally imagined his character, Ziggy, fighting a villain intent on stealing corn and bean seeds from his family's home.
Kaniehtiio Horn makes his directorial debut Seeds.
FilmLevel
“I just wanted to make a silly stoner movie. And then it turned into what it means if you really analyze what those seeds mean. I didn't intend for that to happen,” he says. SeedsZiggy, a thirty-year-old Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), starts out as an online influencer in the big city promoting Nature's Oath, a seed and fertilizer company. But that's before Ziggy is called back to her reservation by a carefree cousin, and where a spotty internet connection for the social media diva fuels her first laughs.
“At first I was going to stay home alone, and then what are the bad guys trying to get? Well, it would have been funny if they wanted seeds. And then there were corn, bean and squash seeds, because they mean a lot to my people,” Horn recalls.
Ultimately, the seeds Ziggy was supposed to protect had totemic power, representing his family's indigenous heritage. And fighting to protect the seeds meant discovering his inner warrior.
All this has Seeds as Horn's directorial effort ultimately conveys a deeper message about family amidst the evil of big business, all wrapped up in scenes that include ritual torture and cannibalism.
“I put the torture scene in because it’s something that interests me,” Horn adds, after recalling research for her role as Mari on the 2020 Nat Geo show. Bark skins, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Annie Proulx in which the Iroquois tribe in 17The century Quebec tortured and killed its enemies. “We are a peaceful people, but if we are pushed to the point of having to defend ourselves, we will be ferocious,” he explains.
But let's get back to Horn's original ambition to leave Seeds viewers laughing at TIFF. “All these very meaningful things came out, but not on purpose. I look back and, man, I only added the heart-eating scene in one of the last drafts,” he recalls.
Obviously, Reserve Dogs as a comedy it has had its fair share of conflict and tragedy as it has focused on indigenous peoples, culture and community. In the FX series, Horn plays Deer Lady, the vigilante protector who hunts down and punishes bad people and whose latent rage is revealed in a celebrated third-season episode set in the violent past of residential boarding schools in the United States
Horn's anger is mostly contained in his portrayal of Mrs. Deer, but is revealed much more openly by Ziggy in Seeds. “There was a point when I was editing my film, and the Deer Lady episode had just come out, and the [actors] there was a strike going on and I remember sitting on the couch with my editor at her computers and I said, “I think I have a lot of anger inside me.” And she turned around and said, “Do you think?”
This all coincided with Horn writing the screenplay for Seeds as a cathartic emotional release. “This anger that I have inside of me, I think I recognize it now. And it's coming out in a healthy way. And creating art, creating these characters and, even though maybe I was afraid of it before, now I'm embracing the anger that I have inside of me. And yeah, I just wanted to do a torture scene and I like to bite,” Horn reveals.
As for the TIFF audience’s reaction to Seeds, Horn hopes they’ll have fun: “I want people to know that when they come in, it’s okay to laugh. This is a comedy. You don’t have to be all serious when you watch it.”