Well Known Actor behind New Film on South Dakota’s Lakota People
Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo is the executive producer of a new documentary about South Dakota's Lakota people.
Variety is reporting that Ruffalo is one of the people behind the film, Lakota Nation vs. the United States, which focuses on the efforts of a group of South Dakota Native Americans to reclaim control of land in the Black Hills.
The documentary is being directed by Jesse Short Bull of the Oglala Sioux tribe and is being produced by XTR.
The documentary is being billed as using 'a vibrant photographic aesthetic showing the sweeping terrain of South Dakota as an accompaniment to the interviewees’ testimonies'.
As for his interest in the project, Ruffalo told Variety:
'This is a timely story with powerful voices on screen and behind the scenes, driving essential change. The fight for Black Hills is far from over and our intention is to support the Lakota people by raising awareness for the injustices they face in present-day America. The perception in many Americans’ minds is this is only historical, this ‘happened.’ What they don’t understand is that it is happening now. It is today, it is immediate and mostly hidden from your eye. This is a current issue.'
No word on when the film will be released.
Ruffalo, a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, has been acting in films since the early 1990s and is best known for playing Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk in eight different movies in The Avengers series: The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Avengers (2018), Captain Marvel (2019), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).
He won a Golden Globe in 2021 for his portrayal of twin brothers Dominick and Thomas Birdsey in the HBO series I Know This Much is True. Ruffalo was nominated for an Oscar in consecutive years for roles as wrestler Dave Schulz in Foxcatcher (2014) and as journalist Michael Rezendes in Spotlight (2015).