FilmStew.com: DiCaprio Father-Son Documentary Premieres in New York

It's hard not to view the 100-minute feature documentary Nine Little Indians as an organic outgrowth of Leonardo DiCaprio's 2023 drama Killers of the Flower Moon.

Executive produced by DiCaprio (along with Tony Robbins) and featuring his father George as a producer, the film tells the story of rampant historical abuse at Indian boarding schools in North America through the eyes of nine sisters who endured that fate at the St. Paul's Indian Mission School in Marty, South Dakota. The film world premieres May 27th at Lincoln Center in New York.

The film intertwines the legal battle of the Charbonneau sisters against the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls with the forensic science practices of Dr. Marsha Small, who has developed a grim expertise for sounding out and finding unmarked graves of Native American children. The Lincoln Center premiere will feature a post-screening Q&A with Small and one of the sisters, Yvonne Charbonneau, along with George DiCaprio, Lakota historian Darrell Red Cloud and the film's director Shannon Kring.

“We cracked 7.5 million total views on the trailer in two weeks and a day," Kring told South Dakota News Watch. "Viral, for a documentary, is considered 500,000 views. If that doesn’t speak to the interest in this topic, I don’t know what does. We have no help, we have no marketing budget. This is happening organically."

A second 9:30 p.m. encore screening was added to the May 27th Lincoln Center event after the 6:30 p.m. world premiere screening sold out. Kring plans to screen the documentary at various South Dakota locations later this summer.