There is nothing quite like driving down a long stretch of deserted highway. All-American meditation, to me, is the road trip, and Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country embodies that exact feeling. This simple yet epic story of a Native woman’s solo travels to connect with herself and her grief and the stories of the real, non-fiction people she meets along the way are both moving and eye-opening. This film, starring Native American actress Lily Gladstone, has been almost seven years in the making.
Her Campus at UCLA recently had the wonderful opportunity of sitting down with this talented filmmaker to discuss her creative process, road trips across the American Midwest and much more. Here’s an exclusive look into the mind behind The Unknown Country:
HC: One of my favorite aspects of this film was all the driving. There’s something so spiritual about just a woman alone in her car; I feel it when I drive, I feel like I’m her. I’m wondering what feeling you intended to evoke in the audience with all these car shots.
MM: The hope was that you would feel like that, you would feel like you were on the journey with her. Ideally this film would be more of an experience than necessarily watching a movie where like you’re waiting for the next like plot point to happen.
HC: Expanding from that, what was the intention behind the story as a whole?
MM: Broadly, I was just really interested in telling his story about a young woman traveling alone. But what became more important was once I was meeting with these people who are in the documentary vignettes, I wanted to really humanize who we are and what we are rather than all this insanity and hatred that was being assumed about parts of America during that time. We were thinking of making it during that time when Trump was elected. I was also just feeling sort of like an outsider in my own country; I’m from America – I’m from California I went to college in New York – and not having seen so much of the landscape or met so many of the people, I had just an understanding that I didn’t understand what our country was. Meeting so many amazing people and experiencing so much of this beautiful landscape made me want to tell a story that was about the human beings that are making up the country instead of all this divisive noise that was going on at that time.
HC: Is that why you chose to focus on the Midwest? Is there something about that landscape that sparks your creativity?
MM: For some back story, I left California in 2014 for Texas to do a residency and I road-tripped out on my own. My husband started working on dinosaur digs up in South Dakota, so I started road-tripping between Texas and South Dakota to visit him. Then as I was doing these road trips for my documentary and to see my husband that’s where the ideas came from; I started meeting people and I wanted to begin weaving a story with the people that I was meeting. It all happened very organically.
HC: Why do you think college women specifically would love this The Unknown Country?
MM: I think that there’s a sense of purpose, spirit, coming into your own and finding yourself that should appeal to that age group. Especially as you’re about to embark on your life and your journey alone after leaving your parents, there’s the idea that the whole world is out there and you can be on your own spiritual journey. I also went through that in college, I was on my own weird artistic journey, I didn’t know what I was doing. I feel like this film could also be inspiring in that manner for college girls to be able to encourage them to be alone, to find themselves and their creative selves.
HC: Do you think traveling alone is something all young women should try?
MM: I highly recommend it. I mean, definitely be careful, you know, a lot of the film is about this underlying sense of fear that there is as a young woman traveling alone. I sat on a plane the other day next to this older woman and she was telling me about hitchhiking back in the day, how she used to just get in random cars. Solo female travel has evolved. When I did these road trips myself, I was super careful – I chose very carefully which gas stations to stop in, public places that are busy (sorry, now I’m worried about the college girls!). But I do 100% think it’s an amazing thing to do for self-discovery; it’s the best thing that you can possibly do.
HC: For a final question – what is your favorite part about those long road trips alone? Is it the windows down, music on…
MM: It’s where your mind can go with the open space. The music but also the silence –something about that is otherworldly; it can take you into a part of your mind, like a dreamscape.
HC: It’s like transcendence; I read that when you’re driving the left side of your brain is occupied with the rules of the road and it leaves the right side of your brain to go wild.
MM: I think that’s just the best. Even now when I get in the car, I’m like, ‘Should I just drive to Texas?’ I just want to keep driving; there’s the landscape and the silence of it and also the freedom. You’re basically watching a movie pass you by – you’re watching moving images as you pass by – and that’s what I love.
The Unknown Country is available in select theaters now and will be available on-demand on September 12th. I would road trip across the country to see this movie, so be sure to add it to your watchlist!