Texas State Director Against Melissa Talks 'Fire Trail Road'

Do you remember any true crime stories involving the disappearance or murder of indigenous women?

This is probably because their presence in the media is almost non-existent. This is especially shocking because, according to the federally funded National Criminal Justice Training Center, the rate of murdered indigenous women in the United States is ten times higher than in any other ethnicity.

When writer and director Sabrina Van Tassel saw how underrepresented these victims were in the media and how many were ignored by the justice system, she created the documentary “Missing from Fire Trail Road,” which to make its world premiere at NBC's Tribeca Festival. “Our goal is to make as much noise as possible,” she says.

A unique aspect of the film is the way it connects the dots between the boarding school scandals of the last century – in which Native American children were taken from their parents, placed in schools, abused and murdered – with generational trauma, drug addiction and the disappearance of women in their communities today. The 2024 Sun Dance hit “Sugarcane” focuses on abuse at Canadian boarding schools, but “Road” reveals similar horrors in their American counterparts.

“Road” also presents some stunning facts: Until recently, Bureau of Indian Affairs police did not have jurisdiction to arrest non-Native Americans, even those living on reservations, and investigations are still referred to various authorities. federal with little success.

The journey of the Franco-American filmmaker based in Los Angeles began ten years ago, when she produced a short report on missing and murdered indigenous women. She met activist Deborah Parker, who would become an executive producer of “Road,” and the two stayed in touch. “I always had the idea of ​​making a film about it, but I needed a story,” she says. Before finding one, she convinced independent distributor Film Rise and Canal+ Docs, which acquired her 2020 death row documentary, “The State of Texas vs. Melissa,” to provide the bulk of the financing of the film.

“One evening this poster appeared on Facebook announcing that a woman from Tulip was missing, offering a big reward to find her. I see she's gone and I'm like, “Oh my God, I know this tribe.” Van Tassel wrote a fictional story about a missing woman as a placeholder, then discovered that it ended up largely matching the true story of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis, who disappeared in 2020.

“The fact that Mary Ellen had traveled to learn about her culture and her tribe – and that's precisely when she disappeared – that I was like, 'Oh my God, it's almost like a Greek tragedy,” she says. “I think that each of my documentaries could be a story that I could have written. The way I make my documentaries therefore resembles a lot like a story: following a story, following [the subjects] until they forget there is a camera and are almost guided.

The project took about a year to complete, and the filmmakers are now looking for a streamer or other TV channel to distribute it. Van Tassel, who wrote the lyrics for two of the film's songs, is already planning an impact campaign and a cross-country tour with the film, in the hopes that it will help save more missing women and lift the burden. institutional obstacles to their research. It's a realistic goal: Her 2020 documentary “The State of Texas v. Melissa” helped death row inmate Melissa Lucio win a stay of execution in the flawed case, and could lead to her exoneration.

“I think a documentary can change the outcome of someone’s life,” she says. “I saw how proud I am [the film’s subjects] had to be in Tribeca with their badges. It felt like a moment where all of a sudden I can see that changes are about to happen.