An invitation to reunite with her estranged Oglala Lakota family launches a grieving young woman (Lily Gladstone) on an unexpected road trip from the Midwest toward the Texas-Mexico border. In this largely solitary journey with an unknown destination, Tana navigates the complex, post-2016 election social climate, and a natural landscape that is increasingly surreal. Along the way, she bonds with unexpected people that are as much a part of the landscape as the mountains and r... (Full plot summary below)
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An invitation to reunite with her estranged Oglala Lakota family launches a grieving young woman (Lily Gladstone) on an unexpected road trip from the Midwest toward the Texas-Mexico border. In this largely solitary journey with an unknown destination, Tana navigates the complex, post-2016 election social climate, and a natural landscape that is increasingly surreal. Along the way, she bonds with unexpected people that are as much a part of the landscape as the mountains and roads. At times at ease, at times on edge as a woman traveling alone, familiar faces and strangers shape her journey as she grapples with the pain of her recent loss and seeks to understand her place in the world.
Leave your thoughts about The Unknown Country.
| Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsThere’s a dreamy and poetic side to the visual texture in The Unknown Country, as photographed, often gorgeously, by Andrew Hajek. The Badlands, the snakelike highways, the rippling sunsets step right up and strike their poses, but unselfconsciously. |
| The PlaylistChristian GallichioGladstone manages to sell every emotion, moving from despair to wonder as the journey continues. |
| RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyYou don't watch the movie. You experience it through your senses. |
| IndieWireCarlos AguilarWhile the stirring visual fluidity of “The Unknown Country,” her first fiction feature and a kindhearted triumph, provides further arguments pointing to Malick likely being an influence, what distinguishes Maltz’s approximation to that style of evocatively loose filmmaking is that it’s grounded on the personal victories of real individuals. Based on that, she forges eclectic narrative devices for a tone poem with substantial dramatic meat on its bones. |
| ColliderChase HutchinsonEven in the moments where it can feel a little rough around the edges, the portrait being painted is a breathtaking and unrestrained one. It all comes together to ensure that, in the long cinematic history of American road movies, The Unknown Country carves out an indelible legacy of its own all the way to its final series of shattering shots. |
| San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussA touching combination of fact and fiction makes The Unknown Country one beautiful road trip. |
| Austin ChronicleJenny NulfThe Unknown Country is a naturalistic exploration of America that’s hopeful of human connection in the midst of a country that sometimes feels hostile. It’s simplistic, but honest and true to Maltz and Gladstone’s optimism in the face of a place that sometimes bleeds hopelessness. |
| The Hollywood ReporterSheri LindenThe quiet but stirring effect is a dreamscape of eye-opening geography, existential longing and the enduring workaday. |
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSometimes, The Unknown Country may be more a feeling than a movie, but that’s more than satisfactory. Attentive and artful, Maltz is a talent to watch, and in Gladstone, she’s fortunate enough to have a star (and guide) whose presence binds us to all this soulful roaming. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreGladstone carries the picture as a reactor — to the stories she hears from this waitress, that grandfatherly distant relative, the bride-to-be. But even those reactions are subdued. |
