Rez Ball review, Native Americans tell their own inspirational sports story

Rez Ball is like a lot of other inspiring sport stories about teams that rise above their challenges and make it to the championship. The difference is this one is written, directed, and performed by an all Native cast, many who never acted before.

Rez Ball is about basketball, yes. All the young actors on the team were actually good basketball players. The game scenes were beautiful, almost like dancing. Before we get into it, let’s define rez ball. It’s a fast-paced game where no player can be in possession of the ball longer than five seconds. And the Diné team called out their plays in Navajo.

The film was written by Sydney Freeland and Sterlin Harjo and directed by Sydney Freeland. It was filmed on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, with an imposing view of Shiprock looming in the background of many scenes.

The Chuska Warriors team featured lifelong friends Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind) and Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt) as team leaders. Nataanii was grieving for his mother and sister who died in a traffic accident. Nataanii committed suicide before a big game. Jimmy took his place in the lineup. Their coach, Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten), didn’t know until after the game why Nataanii didn’t show up.

This film is set apart in many ways, most importantly to me was how it highlighted problems and realities of Native life on a reservation. It brought in the high rate of suicide, the high rate of alcoholism, the lack of decent employment and many other facets of daily life for the boys on the team and for the town as a whole.

As the team members and the locals struggled to deal with the loss of Nataanii, they continued to play basketball. They lost 9 games in a row. Coach Hobbs decided to take them back to traditional Native ways and have them play rez ball. Many of the boys, including Jimmy, had to be tutored in Navajo to get there.

But they started winning games.

We got snippets of many stories. Jimmy’s mother, Gloria Holiday (Julia Jones), had been a basketball star in her high school days and played on the same team as Coach Hobbs. One of the players already had a child and lived with the baby’s mother who was played by Amber Midthunder. Midthunder is one of the few names I recognized in the cast of mostly new actors. Jimmy’s co-worker at his job at Blake’s Lotaburger was the one who knew Navajo and taught the boys what they needed to know to use the language. Coach Hobbs was in the middle of a breakup with a woman named Amber who lived elsewhere. These storylines were lightly developed but they added heart to the story.

The Warriors made it to regionals, and then the state playoffs. In the final game of the championship they played a team from Santa Fe – a bunch of white boys – who had learned enough Navajo to play rez ball. The final game was tense!

Everything about this film is excellent. The inspiring success story. The outstanding acting and sports performance of the actors. The perspective and point of view of the people on the reservation. I hope everyone will watch it. We need more films like this one.

Rez Ball is streaming on Netflix.