Six-time Academy Award nominee Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father) and Andrew Troy have signed on to co-write, direct, and produce historical drama I Am a Man: The True Story of Chief Standing Bear together.
The film, which Troy has spent the last decade developing, will have formal Resolutions of Support from the Ponca Tribe and will depict the Ponca’s ‘Trail of Tears’ march that led to the 1879 landmark trial of Standing Bear vs. the United States of America.
This mostly unknown legal case helped all Native Americans to be considered human beings under the law, also setting legal precedent for many future civil rights matters within the U.S. courts.
Troy is part Chiricahua Apache, and was in attendance in 2019 as leaders of Congress hosted a bipartisan unveiling ceremony of a new Chief Standing Bear statue placed in the U.S. Capitol, making Standing Bear one of the first Native persons to be inducted into Statuary Hall.
The Nebraska Legislature has passed a bill providing a one-time, five-million-dollar grant to the production, which will also benefit from the incentives of the Cherokee Nation Film Office. Screen Ireland has also provided development incentives. Troy’s banner Troy Entertainment and Sheridan’s Ireland-based Hell’s Kitchen Limited will also produce.
Troy said in a statement: “Standing Bear has been completely left out of our school text books. Traveling the country, I learned that even Native people are unfamiliar with his name and the impact he had on their lives. Chief Standing Bear‘s story needs to be told.”
Sheridan is no stranger to making films about oppressed people, with In the Name of the Father focusing on the true story of the Guilford Four, a group wrongly convicted of IRA bombings but who remained incarcerated for over fifteen years. He also made My Left Foot, based on the story of Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy and could control only his foot.
Troy recently directed upcoming adoption drama Midnight in the Orange Grove, which is also based on true events and has a script written by Guinevere Turner (American Psycho). It tells the story of a young woman who is jarred into remembering a murder-suicide that changed her life but was long-buried in her subconscious.
#Peace.Love.IAmAMan
