Free Leonard Peltier arrives into the world somewhat bereft of purpose — for incredibly positive reasons. Jesse Short Bull and David France’s documentary, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was made to agitate for the release of Leonard Peltier, the former American Indian Movement member imprisoned for nearly half a century, and whose case has been a cause célèbre for nearly as long. A week before the film’s planned debut, decades of protest and advocacy finally paid off, as United States President Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence to house arrest with mere minutes left in his term. The crew scrambled to update the film with this happy coda in time for the festival. The movie thus comes out with its mission already accomplished, which is fantastic for Peltier and his supporters, but raises existential questions for the project.
As a member of AIM, Peltier was part of the rising tide of Indigenous activism in the US during the 1970s, which faced vicious retaliation from government and law enforcement. Through a series of events too complicated to sum up here, in 1975, Peltier and some compatriots became embroiled in a firefight with two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that ended with the agents’ deaths. After a nationwide manhunt (with Peltier receiving some assistance from Hollywood’s Marlon Brando), extradition from Canada, and a trial that was — put politely — a legal obscenity, Peltier received two life sentences. It wasn’t long before the FBI’s malfeasance in securing the verdict — intimidating witnesses into giving false statements and lying about the results of forensic weapons tests, to start — came to light, and a mass movement supporting Peltier’s pardon gained momentum. Over the decades, Peltier accrued the support of innumerable activists, human rights organizations, foreign governments, celebrities, and the Pope, but the FBI’s steadfast pressure on different presidents kept him behind bars — until this month, when Biden’s conscience finally twinged at the last possible second.
Free Leonard Peltier has now pivoted from a piece of advocacy toward more of a history piece — no longer a weapon to help its subject leave prison, now more of a record about his life, imprisonment, and the fight to get him out. (It is worth noting, of course, that Peltier has been granted clemency rather than a pardon, and is still officially recognized as guilty, so that fight continues.) As a result of the last minute tweaks, the film feels somewhat discordant, with Peltier’s clemency feeling abrupt and disjointed in the context of the rest of the story. Further editing — perhaps even the shooting of additional footage — between now and the documentary’s eventual wider release may smooth this over.
Other problems seem deeper. The documentary’s attempt to condense the history of AIM, Peltier’s extraordinarily complex legal case, and the battle for his release into less than two hours short-changes all those threads. Aesthetically, the film cuts corners as well, making use of Artificial Intelligence-generated reenactments around the central gun battle. Setting aside the myriad ethical issues around the use of AI, the result makes an incident in which multiple people died and which unjustly landed Peltier in prison seem garishly video-game-like.
The filmmakers’ inability to gain significant access to Peltier himself also hampers them. They mostly rely on archival footage of earlier interviews to attain his side of the story and anecdotes about his life. But the more significant issue is that Free Leonard Peltier doesn’t let us get to know its title character as a human being. There are hints of his love of art and plenty of affirming attestations about his passion for his people, but little that makes the audience understand him as more than a symbol.
Free Leonard Peltier (2025), directed by Jesse Short Bull and David France, is playing as part of the Sundance Film Festival, which continues virtually and in various locations through February 2.
