Imagine, instead of shame, frustration and annoyance, that the arrival of a first period came with excitement, love and respect—from a person’s whole community. “That dance floor is your world. Don’t be afraid of anything that comes out there. We all got you,” Ahty’s father tells his daughter in the short documentary Long Line of Ladies, which observes the young woman’s Ihuk, a once-dormant menstrual coming-of-age ceremony of the Karuk tribe of Northern California.

We see Ahty and her school friends talk about her impending Flower Dance ritual. We spend time with the women of the community as they strip and dye maple bark for Ahty’s ceremonial dress. And we hear the men of the tribe talk about their role in Ihuk, as they create her feather mask: “The biggest role for a young man in our culture is just to make sure you’re listening, because for a long time what we’re hearing now wasn’t allowed to be talked about,” says one of her young, male relatives.

“What’s an antonym of exploitative?” asks Letterboxd member DubDub in their review of Long Line of Ladies. “Because whatever it is, this film is the best possible example of it”. “I’ve never seen a girl’s coming-of-age handled with this much care, wisdom, and reverence… and the shots were painterly,” writes Anqiyu, while Lauren Nicole reflects that the film is “not only a documentation of a profound ritual, but a loving embrace of the community’s efforts to keep their culture alive and of the power of their women.”

The documentary short had its premiere at Sundance in January this year, has become an award-winning darling of festivals and critics around the world, and ends the year with a prestigious NY Times Op-Docs spot. And with awards season upon us, co-director Rayka Zehtabchie could be destined to repeat her previous Oscar-winning success, Period. End of Sentence., which follows a village of women in India making their own low-cost, eco-conscious menstruation pads, creating employment, destigmatizing periods and promoting menstrual equity.

Long Line of Ladies is Academy Awards-eligible after winning a long line of jury prizes at festivals including SXSW, Seattle, San Francisco and landing on important shorts lists at DOC NYC and Cinema Eye. An Oscar nomination would see co-director Shaandiin Tome—who is Native Diné and a Sundance alumna with another award-winning short film, Mud (Hashtł’ishnii) under her belt—become the first Indigenous filmmaker to receive a directing nomination in the category.

As National Native American Heritage Month comes to a close, our Indigenous editor Leo Koziol took time to chat with Long Line of Ladies’ two directors, along with Ahty’s mother, Pimm Tripp-Allen, who is a producer on the film.

There’s clearly a level of intimacy with the family. How long was your shoot, how many interactions did you have?
ST: I think we were there three times, but this was all during the pandemic, so we got to know each other through Zoom and through chatting on the phone and that sort of thing. I think the really wonderful thing about it was, the moment we landed on the first shoot, it was just an instant connection. Their welcoming nature was so beautiful, and it felt we weren’t outsiders and that we were a part of the intention of what they wanted as well. It was so welcoming. Actually, it reminded me of being in New Zealand for Māoriland, just that instant bond that feels right. Even though there are a lot of differences, I think those similarities create a kind of adhesion to each other that I think is inseparable, and it’s just really nice to feel welcome.

Rayka, how did the film come about, in particular your collaboration with Shaandiin?
Rayka Zehtabchi: It goes back a few years to Period. End of Sentence., which highlighted the stigma around menstruation specifically in Northern India. It was revealing that this is a worldwide issue, not just in Northern India, but in all parts of the world where people are shamed for having their periods. A lot of women unfortunately never have that opportunity to learn about why they get their periods. This has a lot of bad effects on women as they grow up and [they] withhold their confidence—it can be very disempowering. After the momentum gained and success around Period. End of Sentence., it really helped spark a lot of conversations around the world about this issue of menstrual equity.

Working with The Pad Project, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to educate people around menstrual equity, we were thinking: ‘how do we now flip the narrative and actually highlight communities that celebrate menstruation?’ Not just because of this movement or because of a hashtag, but rather by looking at something that has been ingrained in their culture and their traditions for a really long time throughout history. We did research and discovered the Ihuk ceremony of the Karuk People, which specifically was written by Pimm about her older daughter Ahty’s ceremony. We connected with her, and Pimm can tell the other part of the story.

I reached out to Shaandiin early on because I really connected with her portfolio. We have a similar background in a lot of ways. We both do fiction and documentary films. We both have worked in shorts. We’re the same age. Our first phone call was very long, and we found ourselves deep in discussion and just connecting in a lot of ways. That sparked the beginning of our collaboration—not just with Shaandiin, but with Pimm and her larger spiritual community as well.

Pimm, watching the film and learning about the Flower Dance ceremony, I found a sensitivity around this time of transition for your young women. I was particularly touched about the level of honor, dignity, and respect afforded. Could you talk about how it’s an ancient tradition amongst your tribe and how you’ve driven to reawaken it?
PTA: Sure. I think that we’re fortunate in this region. For people that don’t know, we were sort of the last [with white people] in North America. We didn’t really have here until the 1850s. It was brutal, but kind of quick. They kind of came in and went out. Although there was still the impact and you could still feel the effect, we still had people in the 1900s who ed things from before . So we were able, through oral tradition as well as through some ethnography, to bring many of our ceremonies back. In particular, this ceremony was one of the later ones we brought back.

One of the parts in the film is where we are talking a little bit about how the ceremony came to us from the creation. The intentional role of both males and females and the intentionality of honoring or recognizing transitions in life, all those things came to us from the stories that were told to us, which is the spirit of the ceremony. We take those cues from the creation, that’s kind of the origin and the history of those values that you see carried out in the ceremony, they came to us from that spirit.

In fact, there’s a point in the ceremony, which we don’t share in the film but where we actually welcome that Ihuk spirit back down. Before we start the ceremony, we welcome that spirit back in, and we borrow the ceremony from them again. Then we hold the ceremony, and then it goes back to them for caretaking. So it’s definitely a connection to that sort of spiritual side of who we are, where those values come from.

So Rakya, making your Oscar-winning film raised the level of exposure of the menstrual equity issue, which led to you working with Shaandiin on this new film, which is similarly impactful. And then there was some controversy over the Pixar movie, Turning Red, which also came out this year. Can you talk about your film’s topicality and how you see yourselves within the bigger conversations going on in society?
ST: I just want to jump in really quick because Turning Red is probably my favorite animated movie now. I think it really allowed for something that struck a chord in how similar Ahty is with her cousins or her friends. Obviously, I think Ahty seems really mature for her age, but I think there’s still something about how a community or how a family comes together to go through this time in a young girl’s life that is really important.

When Rayka invited me on the project, it felt more [like] a single instance of menstrual equity, but I think something that’s so cool about [Ahty’s] family is that it lives within everything that they do. Just daily activities, absolutely everything is ingrained with that knowledge and that sense. It was a real privilege to be able to be a part of that. Western culture really values things in very individualized ways, whereas Native communities, at least in my knowledge, tend to celebrate things in whole ways. I think that’s so cool.

RZ: I’ll add to that one thing that Shaandiin and I talked a lot about in the beginning. When we were starting to wrap our heads around the ceremony and the community and just what this story was ultimately going to be, we were questioning, “Is there going to be any conflict in this film? What do we do if there is no conflict in the film?” Just the way my brain is wired, you have to have sort of the peaks and the valleys in your story and for people to care and be invested in a character, they need to lose something or want something.

But very quickly, just through talking to Pimm, learning more about the ceremony, just observing and learning more about everyone in the spiritual family, we started to realize that this is not going to be a story about conflict whatsoever. It’s really just about love, it’s about community, and it’s about how that love and that can heal people within a community, how it can heal communities together.

There are little tidbits about the history just to give viewers who don’t have that information a little bit of knowledge, historical background, but it never goes into that too deep. I think we wanted to stay away from that and just focus on the love and the beauty.

Pimm, I was particularly intrigued and touched that although the whole ceremonial process is very woman-focused, the men had a role too, including the elders. Do you want to talk a bit about that?
PTA: Sure. I think that in our traditions, there’s specific roles for everybody, and our ceremonies really focus around finding balance, balancing the Earth, balance for an individual, finding that harmony, because things get out of balance naturally in the world. So in all of our ceremonies, we’re always bringing the world back into a balance or a person’s individual health back into balance or, as they transition, making sure they do it in a balanced and harmonious way.

We have spaces that are male only or female only obviously, but this ceremony in particular, because it’s for a young person, we surround her with her entire family, which includes people from all genders being there for her and ing her—because those are the relationships that will [lead] her into her adulthood. We feel very fortunate to have elders and uncles and brothers and fathers who are as invested as the moms and aunties and grandmas are in making sure that we do this in a good way for our young women.

Even when this was a ceremony that was still with the spirit people or with the creation, there was a balance there between the fathers and the daughters and the mothers and all those folks. We’re carrying on what they shared with us.

What a privilege to talk to you all. Thank you!