Songs My Brothers Taught Me

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

YOUR RATING

Irene Bedard, John Reddy, Jashaun St. John, and Kevin Hunter in Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)

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3 Videos

15 Photos

Drama

Two siblings living on Pine Ridge Reservation face challenges after their father's death. The brother considers leaving for LA, but it would mean separating from his beloved sister.Two siblings living on Pine Ridge Reservation face challenges after their father's death. The brother considers leaving for LA, but it would mean separating from his beloved sister.Two siblings living on Pine Ridge Reservation face challenges after their father's death. The brother considers leaving for LA, but it would mean separating from his beloved sister.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 10 wins & 11 nominations total

Videos3

Trailer 2:01

Songs My Brothers Taught Me

Clip 1:29

A Guide to the Films of Chloé Zhao

Clip 1:29

A Guide to the Films of Chloé Zhao

Clip 4:28

How Chloe Zhao's 'Eternals' Will Change Marvel Forever

Photos15

+ 8

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
On a DVD extra, director Chloé Zhao said of the tight budget, light plotting, and neo-realist style casting, "We're capturing truth - because truth is the only thing we can afford." The production used mostly local residents as actors, and, according to Zhao, 80% of the story depicted is true to the actual life of the young man playing Johnny Winters (John Reddy). The house that Winters lives in is the house that Reddy lived in, and Reddy, also one of 25 children to one father, has many of his real family members playing members of his family. In fact, the man shown delivering the eulogy for Winters' father is Reddy's actual father.

Goofs
1:25:33 boom drops into shot.

Quotes
Johnny Winters: Where we live, the Plains, the Badlands, things usually look the same. People are always related. They got the same old worries all the time. It gets really hot sometimes. You get tired of it, but there's things you always gotta do. It's always a hard place to leave. 'Cause that's all you got growing up. My sister, Jashaun, she's got a thing about this place. She sees things I don't. She's a good one. Whenever the storms are comin', the old timers would teach us to watch the cloud. And when the wind is too strong, we all know to lean into it so it don't blow us away.

Connections
Referenced in Hive (2021)

Soundtracks
Thrift Shop
Written by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Performed by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz
Courtesy of Macklemore LLC
Under license from Inside Passage Music

User reviews25

Review

Featured review

8/10

Very Worth Seeing

I enjoyed the film, a contemporary portrait of growing up and coming of age in America in a very different setting and culture than most. Early on, the movie gave me the distinct feeling of watching a documentary rather than a fiction with rehearsed actors. Images tell the stories as much as the dialog, which is very spare. The characters seem very real, as real as their scruffy surroundings. A worthwhile portrait of a part of society most of us won't see, "really" see. The Badlands scenery is very stark and so are (most) of the lives depicted. It's interesting that I saw this film in a contemporary arts center, where it played for two nights. It seems films like this struggle to get on enough screens in enough places to get noticed much. Maybe some people will get to see in on video, I hope.