Sundance’s Peltier Doc Reaches Netflix

Jesse Short Bull and David France's Sundance 2025 documentary is now on Netflix, giving a festival film about the American Indian Movement a global audience.

By Casie Stewart October 14, 2026 4 min read

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Some festival documentaries take years to find a home. Free Leonard Peltier, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, has now found the biggest one available: Netflix added the film on Monday 12 Oct, according to the streamer’s October schedule.

What the film is about

The documentary is directed by Jesse Short Bull, who is Oglala Lakota, and David France. Netflix describes it as the story of a new generation of activists campaigning to free American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for decades over what Netflix calls a disputed conviction.

When the film screened in Sundance’s Premieres section, the festival’s own guide put the stakes plainly: Peltier, “one of the surviving leaders of the American Indian Movement, has been in prison for 50 years,” and “a new generation of Native activists is committed to winning his freedom before he dies.”

Events overtook the film. According to Sundance Institute, it premiered only days after President Biden commuted Peltier’s life sentence to house arrest.

Sundance returns to it

The timing of the Netflix release has brought the festival back to the film. On 7 Oct, Sundance Institute published a feature on it, describing a documentary that covers the creation and rise of the American Indian Movement, the 1975 shoot-out at the Pine Ridge Reservation and what followed.

France told the institute: “I have followed Leonard’s case for 50 years since his arrest.” Nick Tilsen, who joined the filmmakers on stage as part of the film’s cast and crew at the premiere, offered a broader reading: “I think this film is about everything the Indigenous people have been through since the founding of this country.”

The institute also spoke to Jean Roach, an Indigenous activist who was at Pine Ridge on the day of the shoot-out. “It was really emotional watching all that stuff that we’ve been through,” she said of seeing the film.

Why it matters for viewers

Festival documentaries often reach viewers slowly, through limited theatrical runs, regional broadcasts or educational screenings. A Netflix release puts a Sundance Premieres title, made with an Oglala Lakota co-director and centred on Native activists, on one of the largest platforms there is, more than a year and a half after its festival debut.

For context, Netflix also carries Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story, the 1992 documentary featuring Robert Redford, in some regions. Watched together, the two films span more than three decades of the case.

The film in detail

The Sundance archive entry lists Free Leonard Peltier as a 110-minute US documentary that screened in the festival’s Premieres section in 2025. Sundance’s synopsis describes Peltier as a surviving American Indian Movement leader imprisoned for 50 years after a disputed conviction for the deaths of two FBI agents in the 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a conviction he has denied. The film, it says, includes an archival interview with Peltier and places his case within a 500-year history of Indigenous resistance.

Producers include David France, Paul McGuire, Jhane Myers and Bird Runningwater, with IllumiNative Entertainment among the co-executive producers. The score is by Mato Wayuhi, Kyle Bell is director of photography, and Adam Evans and Hannah Vanderlan edited.

The directors’ earlier work

Jesse Short Bull co-directed Lakota Nation vs. United States (2022) with Laura Tomaselli. The film had its world premiere in documentary competition at the Tribeca Festival, which describes a 120-minute history of the Oglala Lakota and other Očéti Šakówiŋ people’s ties to the Black Hills, from the broken 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty to the creation of Mount Rushmore, written and narrated by poet Layli Long Soldier.

David France’s back catalogue already includes a Netflix title. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017), which Netflix acquired as the follow-up to France’s Academy Award-nominated How to Survive a Plague, follows activist Victoria Cruz as she investigates the 1992 death of her friend Marsha P. Johnson. It is rated TV-MA and streams on Netflix.

Part of a documentary-heavy October

Free Leonard Peltier arrived in a month when Netflix leaned heavily on nonfiction, including the four-part Tyson the following day and Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald. If the route from Sundance to a streaming platform is unfamiliar, our explainer on what a festival premiere actually means sets out how the labels work.

Where to watch

Free Leonard Peltier: Netflix · Streaming from Mon 12 Oct.
Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story: Netflix · Select regions.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (David France, 2017): Netflix · Streaming now

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