Parents' Guide to Free Leonard Peltier

This is a tight, thoroughly-researched documentary that follows the case of the longest-serving political prisoner in American history. Free Leonard Peltier puts 50 years of archive to work, with directors Jesse Short Bull and David France building a history of oppression that runs from the boarding schools for Native American children set up in the 17th century, to the parole hearings for Peltier held in the 20th century, without ever losing the thread. The filmmakers stay off screen, though their collaboration shows the power of bringing together two activists who make documentaries about injustice. Peltier himself appears only in old interviews. Short Bull and France never sat down with him for a new one and never explain why. The film does fine without it, since history already gave us his words and the archive shows how he stayed in public view across every one of those decades.

Short Bull and France stage the shootout that sent Peltier to prison with AI recreations. The fabrication sits oddly in a film about a man convicted on evidence his lawyers spent decades calling fabricated. Documentary budgets rarely stretch to dramatic recreation, so the choice makes practical sense, though Michael Apted adapted this story for the screen in 1992 with Incident at Oglala. Joe Biden commuted Peltier's sentence to home confinement in January 2025, which gives the film a bittersweet ending. This isn't a spoiler, since anyone can Google Peltier and find it. The warmth of those last scenes, where he relishes sleeping on a new mattress in a new bed instead of a shack, cannot cancel the frustration of a man who lost most of his life because the system needed a scapegoat and chose him. Adults who care about justice and activism might come away angry and heartbroken, while teenagers may find it slow. The film works best when it shows the power of generations uniting, a case that began five decades ago ending up in the hands of the descendants of the people who started it, activism handed down from generation to generation like any other tradition.