When Loren Waters, the director of the short documentary Tiger, heard she won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Directing, a wave of disbelief washed over her.
“Whenever they called Tiger up for the award, I was just so in shock,” Waters said. “I like went up there and almost walked off the stage without saying anything because I just didn’t know what to do.”
Waters, a Kiowa and Cherokee filmmaker who resides on the Muscogee Nation reservation, began her journey as a director in 2021. Since then, she’s persevered through self-doubt, evolving her voice and confidence into a notable visionary today.
“This is my third short documentary that I've directed in the film festival circuit,” Waters said. “It can be a space of a lot of imposter syndrome and not feeling like I'm good enough to be doing this, but I think that that's what everyone faces. And we have to get over that and get out of our own way in order to make our art.”
This year, she’s received accolades from Forbes and Sundance for her work in the media and film. Her most recent creative project, Tiger, is making the rounds in respected film festivals.
The 13-minute documentary is a dreamy, experimental take on the story of Dana Tiger, a Muscogee artist who is working to revive her family’s business, the Tiger T-Shirt company. Waters said the film exudes a punk-rock personality.
“Sometimes in documentary, there’s a lot of verite-style, which is like you just go in and you shoot everything,” Waters said. “But we did not do that. We conducted her interview on a diving board, which a lot of people have made comments about.”
Another Indigenous film at Sundance was Free Leonard Peltier, a documentary portraying the American Indian Movement activist’s life and the injustice that caused him to remain behind bars for nearly 50 years.
Comanche and Blackfeet artist Jhane Myers was a producer on the film and has been outspoken about pushing for Peltier’s clemency.
The Comanche Nation plans to screen Free Leonard Peltier the day Peltier makes his trip back home on Feb. 18 in Lawton, and Myers will be a special guest at the event.
Waters said Tiger is still circulating in the festival circuit, though no community or public screenings are currently scheduled in Oklahoma.
The next screening of Tiger is in Austin at the SXSW Film Festival, which takes place next month.
