Climate leaders from around the world gathered at TIME’s COP29 Impact Dinner in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 13 for a celebration of the TIME100 Climate leadership list. Nations are currently attending the annual U.N. COP29 climate summit in order to continue pushing the world to meet its goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, including working to unlock the necessary tools and financing to achieve progress.
“No one of us is going to solve this challenge alone, and we need leadership in all of its forms if we’re going to have a chance at accelerating climate action and climate progress,” said Shyla Raghav, TIME’s Chief Climate Officer, who began the evening by speaking about the importance of celebrating and elevating different forms of leadership when it comes to climate action.
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The TIME100 Climate list celebrates decision makers, executives, researchers, and innovators shaping business and climate action. TIME’s Senior Correspondent, Justin Worland highlighted the accomplishments of some of the list’s honorees, from Vanessa Chan, chief commercialization officer for the U.S. Department of Energy, to Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development. And several of the listees were present at the dinner.
This includes Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All, and co-chair of U.N. Energy who discussed inequality in clean energy, highlighting the fact that only 1.6% of clean energy investments went to Africa last year. “You can’t do [the] energy transition in the Global North and leave the Global South behind,” she said.
Majid Al Suwaidi, CEO of Altérra and another individual on the TIME100 Climate list this year, meanwhile argued that, while the climate crisis might seem insurmountable, there has never been a more critical moment for climate optimism. “2024 has been a year of big political changes and geopolitical tension, and there’s been a growing mood of apprehension across the climate world. But if I’m being frank, this is not the time to be pessimistic or to throw up our hands and say we’re all doomed,” he said. “In fact, I believe this is the moment we rise up and lean into hope, because despair is the enemy of climate action, because hope is a powerful motivator for action, and because we really do have reasons to be optimistic.”
Later in the evening, Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen, spoke about the importance of “celebrating heroes that are too often unsung,” explaining the impact an entrepreneur’s solar technology had on village women.
Tzeporah Berman, founder of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and included on this year’s TIME100 Climate list, spoke about the necessity of placing oil, gas, and coal—which make up 86% of global emissions—at the center of conversations on climate change. “We need to build hope through our actions, through these difficult and honest conversations that lead to bold new ideas that can chart a new course. Some say to me that an idea of a fossil fuel treaty that could be a companion to the Paris Agreement, a whole new treaty, it’s too big. It’s too new. It’s too bold. But we know here in this room… we can’t afford more of the same.”
Muhamad ended the night’s speeches by urging for more global investment in the fight to stop deforestation. “The critical question is, where are the finances to sustain results that bring climate action?” Muhamad said. “Saving the Amazon is not a problem only of the governments that are there. It is one of the pillars of climate stability, and we have proven that we can be successful in the work. But in order to sustain that work, we need to shift economic rules, and we need to shift the access to finance from the Global South.”
TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Creating Climate Actionwas presented by Fortescue and MOL.
If you get a text that says “wyd”—translation: “what are you doing?”—there’s a good chance there’s one thing you’re crossing off that list: replying to the message.
According to a study published Nov. 14 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 99.3% of texters regularly use abbreviations that, in theory, could save precious typing time, like opting for “hru?” instead of asking someone how they are, or shortening “really” to “rly.” Study author David Fang, a doctoral student in behavioral marketing at Stanford University, wondered if this habit enhanced or diminished digital communication. He’s always made it a point to text in complete sentences, because he worried that otherwise, the people on the receiving end of his messages would think he was slacking off. But he wasn’t sure if his intuition was correct, so he decided to test it.
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It turns out that Fang was on to something. Abbreviations in text messages register as insincere to recipients, who then send shorter and fewer responses (if they bother to reply at all). “I was surprised at how significant the negative results were,” he says. “Abbreviations are quite subtle—they’re not really a blatant transgression. But people can see you’re taking a shortcut and putting less effort into typing, and that triggers a negative perception.”
All age groups hate text abbreviations
Fang and his co-authors started off with open minds: Abbreviated messages could indicate a lack of effort that might rub people the wrong way, sure, but they might come across as laid-back and approachable, promoting a greater sense of closeness.
To determine which instinct was correct, the researchers conducted eight experiments with data from thousands of people. They analyzed anonymous Tinder and Discord conversations, which led to the conclusion that people were less likely to exchange contact information with or reply to abbreviation-lovers. They also asked participants to rate text conversations—including texts that they had received from other people in real life. People described messages with abbreviations as being less sincere than those without any, and indicated that they weren’t inclined to reply.
Interestingly, the effects held true among different age groups—from savvy Gen-Z texters to those who probably didn’t know what half of the abbreviations meant. Though some might think of abbreviations as youthful or hip, young people don’t actually like them. “Younger people dislike abbreviations just as much as older people,” Fang says. “It’s equally negative.”
Why the harsh reaction? It’s likely due to something called social exchange theory: the common belief that a relationship hinges on its cost-benefit balance. How much effort one person puts in, the thinking goes, influences the other person’s reciprocal effort. So if you feel like someone isn’t putting much into a texting relationship—which inherently has a back-and-forth, give-and-take nature—you’ll likely adjust your communication accordingly.
Why it matters
If you love abbreviations—bc, IDK, they’re cool or convenient—you don’t have to shun them entirely based on these results, Fang says. Rather, he suggests thinking carefully about who’s on the receiving end of your messages. Say you’re trying to woo a potential date: In the Tinder analysis, a 1 percentage point increase in “netspeak” (which includes common abbreviations and acronyms) was associated with a 7 percentage point decrease in average conversation length. “When two people meet on Tinder, and they’re pretty much strangers, you could imagine that if the conversations are shorter, maybe people aren’t building as strong of a connection,” Fang says. “One of the ramifications could be that relationships just will not take off as much.”
Even people in your inner circle might not appreciate your informal texts. In one of Fang’s experiments, people were asked to imagine being in a text conversation with someone they were close to or distant from. They found that even when two people were close, abbreviations indicated insincerity. Over time, that could take a toll on relationships. As past researchhas concluded, people value the quality of their conversations—and they want text-message exchanges to convey thoughtfulness and reflect the strong connection they’ve cultivated. “Your existing relationships might not be nurtured as much if you’re a bad texter,” Fang says.
But let’s say, on the other hand, that you’re texting with a delivery driver who’s bringing the dinner you ordered to your apartment. If you want to fire off a “WYA”—”where are you at?”—you’re probably not going to offend anyone. “You don’t imagine establishing a long-term relationship with that person,” Fang says. “But if you do—if you’re talking to a coworker or a potential date—you might want to be more cognizant of the types of texts you send, and use less abbreviations.”
The ‘effortless’ text that wasn’t
Michelle Drouin, a psychology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and author of Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine, isn’t surprised by the study’s results (which she was not involved with). She points out that predictive texting has become so advanced that spelling out a full word or phrase barely requires any additional effort compared to opting for the abbreviation. “It takes some effort to be this effortless,” she says. “It implies a kind of laissez-faire attitude, or an intentional cutting of the letters. It’s no longer a time-saving technique.” If you try to type “rly,” for example, your phone will probably auto-correct it to “really,” at least until it learns you prefer the shortened version.
The research didn’t examine people’s motivations for using abbreviations, but Drouin thinks that those who intentionally chop letters off their words are trying to “put off a vibe of, ‘I don’t care,’” she says. “If they want to portray to the other person that they’re not taking this very seriously, and [the conversation] feels casual to them, then these abbreviations might be well-suited.”
Otherwise, if you’re trying to make a good impression, steer clear. People we don’t yet know are constantly making snap judgments about us, and the words we use play an important role in what kind of impression we make. Given that texting is a mainstay of modern-day relationships—the “social currency of the ages,” as Drouin calls it—it can be helpful to reflect on your texting habits and whether you’re presenting yourself well. “If you have your texting game on point, I think you can really foster and maintain a lot of goodwill with your social connections,” she says. “People should really pay attention to the way in which they say things and the frequency with which they say the things they want to say. It matters.” YW for the tip.
KYIV, Ukraine — The Biden Administration is determined in its final months to help ensure that Ukraine can keep fighting off Russia’s full-scale invasion next year, sending it as much aid as possible so that it might hold Russian forces at bay and possess a strong hand in any potential peace negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.
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“President Biden has committed to making sure that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and Jan. 20,” when president-elect Donald Trump is due to be sworn in, Blinken said.
NATO countries must focus their efforts on “ensuring that Ukraine has the money, munitions and mobilized forces to fight effectively in 2025, or to be able to negotiate a peace from a position of strength,” Blinken said during a visit to Brussels.
The U.S. will “adapt and adjust” with the latest equipment it is sending, Blinken said, without providing details.
The almost three-year war has shown no signs of winding down.
Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with a sophisticated combination of missiles and drones for the first time in 73 days on Wednesday. That came a day after the Pentagon said most of the North Korean troops sent to help Moscow’s war effort are fighting to drive Ukraine’s army off Russian soil in the Kursk border region.
Political uncertainty over how a U.S. administration under Trump will change Washington’s policy on the war is a key new factor in the conflict. U.S. military aid is vital for Ukraine, but Trump has signaled that he doesn’t want to keep giving tens of billions of dollars to Kyiv.
Air raid warnings blared for hours as Russia targeted eight regions of Ukraine on Wednesday, firing six ballistic and cruise missiles and 90 drones, the Ukrainian air force said.
Air defenses downed four missiles and 37 drones, and another 47 drones were stopped by electronic jamming, the statement said. The damage was being assessed.
The air assault came as most of the more than 10,000 North Korean troops sent by Pyongyang to help Moscow in the war are engaged in combat in Russia’s Kursk border region, according to the Pentagon. A Ukrainian army incursion into Kursk three months ago has succeeded in holding a broad area of land and has embarrassed the Kremlin.
Russia’s military has trained the North Korean soldiers in artillery, drone skills and basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, Pentagon deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a briefing Tuesday. The cooperation faces challenges, according to the Pentagon, including how to achieve military interoperability and overcoming the language barrier.
Kyiv officials say that Russia has deployed around 50,000 troops to Kursk in a bid to dislodge the Ukrainians.
Russia has in recent months been assembling forces for a counteroffensive in Kursk, according to the Institute for the Study of War think tank, though the timescale of the operation isn’t known.
Did you know that the expansion of AI will require as much new energy as some countries? TIME Chief Climate Officer Shyla Raghav explores artificial intelligence and how it impacts energy use.
As seven of the 10 states that voted on reproductive rights passed ballot measures to protect access, the country reelected former President Donald Trump—a man who has claimed credit for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturnRoe v. Wade two years ago. Trump saw victory in four states that passed protections, highlighting what some experts call a “cognitive dissonance” on how people feel about abortion and the candidates they choose to elect.
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Arizona, Missouri, and Montana will amend their state constitutions to enshrine the right to abortion until fetal viability (which is around 24 weeks of pregnancy), with exceptions after that if the pregnant person’s life or health is at risk. Nevada voters also backed a similar measure, but will need to pass it again in 2026 in order to officially amend the state constitution.
And yet, Trump won almost 59% of the vote in both Missouri and Montana, and about 52% of the vote in Arizona, according to the Associated Press. Nationally, about 38% of Trump voters in the 2024 election also said they believe abortion should be legal in all or most situations, according to an AP VoteCast survey.
Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says the results indicate a “cognitive dissonance” on this issue. “There is a disconnect between voters’ actions,” Schifeling says. “I think it’s going to take a minute before we have a satisfying answer to how these two contradictory things could be true.”
For Arizona and Missouri, the newly-passed amendments are expected to upend existing restrictions on abortion—Arizona currently prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and Missouri has a near-total ban. Montana already allows abortion until fetal viability, but advocates said that the measure would prevent state lawmakers from trying to restrict access in the future, which they had attempted to do in recent years. The measures passed with nearly 62%, 52%, and 58% of the vote in Arizona, Missouri, and Montana, respectively, according to the AP.
Political and reproductive rights experts have a few theories to explain why voters in those three states supported abortion access while backing a candidate who has applauded the Supreme Court decision that eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. Many emphasize that the results from the 2024 election indicate something Americans have already known: there is broad support for abortion rights in the country across political party lines. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most situations, according to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center.
But for some voters, it’s a question of priorities.
“When you give voters a chance to vote directly on the issue, you see a track with the overwhelming support there is for reproductive rights across the country,” Schifeling says. “However, candidate races are never just about one thing, and that was certainly true this year.”
Issues like the economy and immigration have emerged as two of the top concerns on voters’ minds this election cycle, followed by abortion. Rachel Janfaza, a youth political analyst who has held listening sessions with young people in various states since 2022, says that she spoke to some young men in Arizona who were undecided voters that supported the right to abortion, but also prioritized issues like the cost of living. “I do think many of these young men are pro-choice and believe it’s up to a woman what she does with her own body,” Janfaza says. “I do think that for them, it was not as motivating of an issue in their vote calculus as was the economy or immigration.”
Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, says that Arizona is a “unique state in the variation it expresses ideologically in elections.” Trump won Arizona, but in the state’s race for the U.S. Senate, Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego is currently leading Republican Kari Lake (the AP has not yet called the race). In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden won the state. “Obviously, the Democrats were hoping that abortion was going to give them more momentum, but it’s a really uphill battle in Arizona,” Klar says. At the same time, many Arizonans, including Republicans, support abortion rights. Some voters may have separated this issue from their presidential pick. “By having abortion on the ballot, it allows pro-choice Republicans to both support a Republican candidate but also support reproductive rights, so you don’t have to channel your support for reproductive rights through a presidential candidate; you can keep them as two distinct issues,” Klar says.
Klar says she thinks the messaging from the Republican Party and the Trump campaign on abortion got through to some Arizona voters. While Trump has, in the past, indicatedsupport for national restrictions, he attempted to soften that stance in this election cycle and said that the decision should be left up to the states. “I think that does resonate with Republicans who say, ‘Fine, we know this is going to be a state’s rights. As an Arizonan, I want abortion legal in my state, and I will vote for Trump for whatever reasons, whether it be conservative social policies, economic policies—whatever the reason might be,’ ” Klar says.
Jamille Fields Allsbrook, an assistant professor of law at Saint Louis University, offered similar explanations for the results in Missouri. She says it’s possible that voters didn’t believe that Trump posed a threat to abortion access. “Donald Trump, famously back in 2016 … said that he would appoint justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, and that’s exactly what happened,” Fields Allsbrook says. “But for whatever reason, voters did not feel that he was ideologically really opposed to abortion. And some of that has to do with the way he’s presented himself now.”
Fields Allsbrook also says that some voters may think that, because they had the ability in their state to protect abortion access through the ballot initiative, abortion rights would be protected. (Any national restrictions on abortion would supersede state constitutional protections.)
Montana is a state that, in general, has been moving to the right for years, according to Sara Rushing, a political science professor at Montana State University Bozeman. Many people from states like California and Washington have moved to Montana over the past few years, some of whom may be more right-leaning but also value their right to abortion, which is protected in their home states, Rushing says. She adds that Montana’s ballot measure didn’t change existing laws as similar initiatives did in other states, since the Montana Supreme Court had ruled in 1999 that the state constitution protected the right to abortion, so people may have been more inclined to vote for it.
Rushing echoed some of the possible explanations that other experts proposed—that Trump walking back his previous comments on abortion and insisting that the issue should be left up to the states resonated with Montana voters. “I think he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth, which leaves people able to sort of quote what they want from him,” Rushing says of Trump’s stance on abortion.
And she says having the issue on the ballot can allow voters to separate abortion from Trump as a candidate: “You can kind of have your cake and eat it too.”
Indigenous people have been telling stories for centuries longer than the film industry has existed. Yet historically, Hollywood has ignored them. Throughout the 20th century, American movies largely portrayed indigenous people in limited, often non-speaking roles, and mostly confined them to narratives about the 19th century period of frontier expansion. In 1998, Smoke Signals—the first film with a national theatrical release written, directed, co-produced, and acted by Native Americans—inspired a wave of indigenous filmmakers to produce films about their communities set in the present day. About 25 years later, more indigenous filmmakers than ever before are getting the greenlight to make TV shows and movies.
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The current golden age of indigenous films is the result of activism, including the viral Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline from 2016 to 2017 and a push to make more films that represent the diversity of American life after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. This golden age has also been bolstered by the success of shows like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls, comedies that closely observed contemporary Native American life, that debuted in 2021.
TIME asked indigenous filmmakers and film historians from around the world about the essential films that reflect upon and give insight into indigenous life. The list includes thrillers, documentaries, horror movies, and love stories.
“So many films are getting made, and so many voices are being heard,” says Sterlin Harjo, a Seminole and Muscogee filmmaker and the creator of the Emmy-nominated Reservation Dogs. “I’ve seen short films recently that are going to blow people away. We finally have the freedom to be ourselves and tell our stories.”
The Exiles (1961)
Director: Kent Mackenzie
In 1952, the federal government created the Urban Relocation Program to enable Native Americans to move off reservations and into urban areas like Los Angeles, but it didn’t necessarily give Native Americans the resources they needed to make such a big move. The Exiles is about three Native American youths who struggle to find their way in Los Angeles, but also don’t feel like they fit in on their reservation anymore. The issue of relocation became more widely known when the film finally got its first theatrical release in 2008, says filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation). It’s a film that deals with the “complicated ideas of assimilation.”
In 1990, there was an armed standoff between the Canadian military and indigenous protesters over plans to build a golf course on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec. Filmmakers went behind the barricades to profile the people fighting for the indigenous people, the Quebec police, and the Canadian army. In the end, the Canadian government took over the land to prevent further private development. It led to a 1991 government commission on improving relationships with indigenous communities. “It forced Canada to start taking indigenous concerns seriously,” says Karrmen Crey, (Stó:lō, Cheam First Nation), an associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. At the 1993 Toronto International Film Festival, Kanehsatake became the first documentary to win the award for best Canadian feature.
The first film written, directed, co-produced and acted by Native American people to get a national theatrical release has a somber premise, focusing on two men from the Coeur d’Alene Indian reservation in Idaho who are road-tripping to Phoenix to retrieve the ashes of a father figure who has passed away. But it tells the story by cracking a lot of jokes along the way. Smoke Signals is a buddy comedy featuring contemporary Native Americans playing basketball and dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts. “Showing that Native people are funny is a very significant contribution to Native representation,” says Jacob Floyd (Muscogee [Creek]/Cherokee), an assistant professor in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University.
The film is in the Inuktitut language, and the cast is all from the Inuit community in Igloolik, Nunavut, in the Canadian arctic. At the center is a complicated polygamous love story. Atanarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq), also known as Fast Runner, takes a wife, Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu), and a second wife, Puja (Lucy Tulugarjuk). Drama ensues when Puja is caught making love to Atanarjuat’s brother Amaqjuaq (Pakak Innuksuk). The winner of the 2001 Caméra D’Or award for best debut feature at the Cannes Film Festival, it showed that a film in an indigenous language could have broad appeal. “It put indigenous filmmaking on the map,” says Joanna Hearne, a scholar of indigenous films and professor at the University of Oklahoma.
Harjo’s debut film raises awareness about the high rates of suicide on reservations. The film starts out with Cufe (Cody Lightning) mourning his father, as a friend recalls how his father heeded a tornado warning by dancing and singing in his front yard—and the tornado never came. Cufe leaves his reservation in the hopes of starting over in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his sister Miri (Tamara Podemski) lives. He ends up hitting it off with her neighbor Francie (Laura Bailey), and sparks fly.
Between 1819 and 1969, thousands of Native American children were abducted from their communities and sent to more than 400 government-funded, church-run residential boarding schools. Students endured physical abuse, and were not allowed to speak their Native languages. Filmed around the Fond du Lac reservation in Minnesota, the drama focuses on the lasting effects of the abusive residential boarding schools on one Native American family. Bradley Cooper plays a geologist who helps Native Americans preserve their past.
Director: Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, Jeremiah Hayes
The documentary is the definitive overview of depictions of Native Americans in 20th century Hollywood films and how these movies perpetuated negative myths about Native Americans. The directors road-trip to sites of significance to Native American tribes, and in one painful scene, the camera films grade-school students at the Crow Agency as they watch the scenes of Indians being slaughtered in Little Big Man. Diamond interviews Clint Eastwood about evolution of Native Americans in Westerns and as well as various indigenous activists, filmmakers, and Navajo elders who worked as extras.
Samson & Delilah stands out for the way it tells a love story with almost no dialogue. Samson and Delilah are teenagers who met in an aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert and are attempting to start a new life in a city. Samson is dealing with a huffing addiction while Delilah tries to sell her paintings to get by. To Harjo, it’s a film about “the strength of love in a really, really, really dark situation” and how aboriginal people who endure obstacles like addiction and homelessness manage to “sustain their love and their beauty.”
This coming of age story filmed in a Maori village in New Zealand centers around a Michael Jackson-obsessed boy (James Rolleston)—who simply goes by “Boy”—reuniting with his father Alamein (Taika Waititi), who left their home years ago. The father mainly came back to look for a stash of money he hid, and the film follows the guys as they get to know each other after years apart.
Inspired by the true stories of children who were kidnapped from their communities and forced to attend North American boarding schools, this story focuses on an indigenous teenager who is seized from her reservation and sent away to an abusive Canadian boarding school. Her parents, who suffer from drug and alcohol abuse from their own traumatizing experiences at the school, had paid off an agent, but the money was stolen.
The title is a reference to an ABC 20/20 episode that referred to Freeland’s hometown of Gallup, New Mexico, as Drunktown USA because of its alcohol epidemic. Set on the Navajo reservation, it focuses on three characters whose lives intersect in surprising ways. A father-to-be who goes by “Sick Boy” (Jeremiah Bitsui) finds solace in drinking, which threatens to jeopardize his job in the military. Adopted by white parents, Nizhoni (Morningstar Angeline) is yearning to learn more about her birth family and culture. And Felixia (Carmen Moore) is a transgender woman who makes a living engaging in prostitution and is auditioning to be a model for a calendar. It’s a rare example of a film directed by an openly transgender indigenous filmmaker and features an openly queer indigenous main character.
In this drama, Mekko (Rod Rondeaux) is living on the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after serving a prison sentence for killing his cousin in a drunken bar brawl. Creek tribe chiefs won’t forgive him for the killing, so he befriends a group of vagrants who call themselves “street chiefs.” One street chief kills another homeless man, and Mekko is haunted by visions of his own death. The film is about how he tries to survive.
The film is inspired by Scandinavia’s indigenous Sami people and examines the discrimination that they endured in the 1930s. The film opens with an elderly woman Christina (Maj-Doris Rimpi) who travels from the city to her hometown of Lapland to attend her sister’s funeral and disparages the Sami culture the whole time. In fact, she grew up in a Sami household, and the film flashes back to her fourteen-year-old self, born Elle-Marja (Lene Cecilia Sparrok), who grew up herding reindeer. The film tracks Elle-Marja’s attempts to run away from an abusive boarding school for Sami children, where scientists measure their heads and take photos of the children naked.
Blood quantum is a term that refers to how much Native American blood one has, and different tribal nations require different measurements for citizenship. In this horror film, the characters who are indigenous fare better in a zombie invasion than white people do. Floyd says Blood Quantum “wasn’t the first Indigenous horror or even the first zombie movie, but it was the one that broke through and brought attention to Indigenous horror.”
The documentary is a biography of one of the most influential Native American writers of all time, N. Scott Momaday—the first Native American winner of the Pulitzer Prize 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn. That was the same year that Native American protesters took over Alcatraz Island, so the Native American rights movement was especially visible at that time. The director Palmer, like Momaday, is a member of the Kiowa tribe, and the film profiles how his childhood on several reservations in New Mexico shaped his writing. As Floyd describes Momaday’s significance, “he made non-native people aware of what Native writers were doing [and]…indigenous people in general.”
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019)
Directors: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn
Aila (Tailfeathers) is a well-off indigenous woman in Vancouver who meets on a bus a struggling pregnant woman named Rosie (Violet Nelson) who is also indigenous and fleeing an abusive boyfriend. While Aila isn’t ready to have kids—she’s featured getting fitted for an IUD contraceptive device— she instantly takes Rosie under her wing and escorts her to a safe house. The two women are from different worlds, but bond through their shared heritage.
The plot is a dramatization of the director’s experience growing up during the 78-day standoff in Oka, Quebec, in 1990, over the building of a golf course on lands meaningful to the Mohawk community. In this coming-of-age story, middle schooler Tekehentahkhwa (Kiawentiio), nicknamed Beans, is applying to enroll at a predominantly white private school amid the turmoil. She has to deal with both immature Mohawk preteen bullies flinging insults and white mobs flinging rocks while she and her mom stand tall behind the barricades.
Malni: Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore (2020)
Director: Sky Hopinka
This documentary explores the Native American experience in the Pacific northwest, featuring the Chinuk wawa language. As Adam Piron, director of The Sundance Institute Indigenous Program, explains the significance of the film, “Some of the work being made from indigenous folks filmmakers is very Hollywood, mainstream-facing…Sky’s films are very much for an indigenous audience—where a film can just be a film. It doesn’t have to be in reaction to Westerns.”
A prime example of a sci-fi indigenous film, told in both the Cree language and English. The plotline of a mother trying to rescue her daughter from a government-run, militaristic institution “has many allusions to the historical boarding school experience,” says Renae Watchman (Diné and Tsalagi), a scholar of indigenous film and literature at McMaster University.
Parents send their young son Benny (Keir Tallman), who has grown up in San Diego, to live with his grandmother on the Navajo reservation for the summer. His cousin, nicknamed Frybread Face (Charley Hogan), shows him around and acts as a translator with the grandmother who does not speak English. In this charming coming-of-age story, Benny gets a crash course in rug weaving, sheep herding, bull riding, and even a driving lesson.
Playing an indigenous woman named Jax, Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) becomes her niece Roki’s guardian in the wake of her sister’s disappearance. She tries to balance raising her niece on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma and driving around searching for her sister in the backcountry. As Jeffrey Palmer, associate professor of performing and media arts at Cornell University, (Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma) explains, “thousands of people just disappear off of the planet and nobody talks about them…Fancy Dance highlights that particular issue in a really, really smart way.”
Billed as the indigenous version of Friday Night Lights,Rez Ball sheds light on the importance of basketball on Native American reservations. The filmmakers even made sure to recruit actors who could actually play basketball. The drama is centered on the players of the Chuska Warriors in Chuska, NM, who are all working to overcome various personal tragedies to win the state championship title.
Spoiler alert: This piece discusses the finale of The Penguin.
Rhenzy Feliz didn’t grow up the biggest comic-book fan; outside of video games, he only really became exposed to the superhero world via Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, which were “the coolest thing on the planet” to him. But following his TV debut in the underrated Hulu dramedy Casual, Feliz’s biggest opportunities on the small screen have come in the form of shows set in sprawling superhero worlds: Marvel’s Runaways and now The Penguin on HBO.
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In a cast of ruthless mob bosses and psychopathic killers, Feliz’s character stands out: a soft-eyed 17-year-old with a stutter who’s still mourning the family he lost in a flood (thanks to the Riddler in the 2022 film The Batman, which also first introduced Colin Farrell’s iteration of the Penguin to this cinematic world). But over the course of eight episodes, we’ve seen the influence of Farrell’s aspiring criminal kingpin Oz Cobb transform Victor Aguilar into a more confident and quick-thinking version of himself—and a more dangerous one, for better or worse.
TIME spoke with Feliz about acting opposite Farrell, perfecting Vic’s stutter, and filming that finale scene this whole season has been building up to.
TIME: Colin Farrell is the main actor you play off on the show. How did you develop the chemistry between your characters?
Feliz: I think Colin and I got lucky. He and I work in a pretty similar way. Victor and Oz are meeting each other on camera for the first time as well, and their relationship is growing, and that really resembled what me and Colin were going through: we met each other on set and our relationship grew as the show went on. As he and I got closer, so did Vic and Oz, and we got to play off that and use that same feeling as real life.
Since Colin was wearing prosthetics all the time during filming, did it feel like you were speaking to somebody else when you spoke off set?
I mostly got to know him as Oz. He would mostly use this hybrid accent. Even when he broke out into the Irish accent, it had little glimpses of Oz in it. I’ve spoken to Colin’s face maybe less than seven times, six times. Maybe now it’d be eight or nine. Whenever I speak to Colin now, he looks at me like we know each other, and we do, but I feel like I’m not looking at the guy that I know. I didn’t totally get it until they sent me the episodes. When I saw Oz for the first time on camera, it kind of hit me, and I was like, “Oh my god, there’s the guy I’ve been spending months and months and months with. I’ve missed this guy.” It’s a weird thing to put into words.
He really is unrecognizable, especially with the accent.
Even apart from the accent and the prosthetics—even down to his mannerisms, the way he moves his face. If Colin’s confused, he’ll make a different face than if Oz is confused. I got to see it up close, and I was in awe the entire time, but seeing it as an audience member is when I really got to take it all in.
What was it like working with a fluency consultant on Vic’s stutter?
That was what I was most worried about: trying to do the stutter in a thoughtful, honest way. I felt like maybe people would be upset about it. But thankfully, the response I’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. I worked with this fluency consultant, Marc Winski, and he himself has a stutter. He was such an open book. One of the things that was most useful wasn’t necessarily the technical aspects: the repetitions or the blocks or how my mouth is supposed to move. It was more the psychological aspect of what’s going on inside your mind.
Did you consciously shift the stutter as the show went on?
The stutter does change throughout the show, but not because he gets more confident. That’s a misconception: for some people it goes away as you get older, and for some people, it doesn’t. Victor is one of the people whom it doesn’t go away for. It’s not necessarily about when he’s more confident or nervous or angry or sad. A stutter can be really inconsistent. Sometimes when you’re really angry, you won’t have one, but sometimes when you’re really angry, you’ll have it more than you ever had it before. There’s no rhyme or reason sometimes.
What does change is your comfort with speaking in general. You’ll notice that when Vic is around Sofia for the first time in Episode 3—me and Marc worked on this a lot and incorporated it into the script—a lot more “uh,” “um,” those filler words. If she hears him stuttering, she’ll think he’s nervous and hiding something. In order to not stutter, you’re pretending to think: “ummm,” “uhhh.” She doesn’t hear you get blocked on a word. So it does change based on who he’s talking to: if he’s on the phone or not, if he’s meeting someone for the first time or fifth time, if he’s comfortable with them or not. It lives and breathes on its own.
In this finale, we see Vic really coming into his own as a worthy sidekick, mobilizing Link and people from these different criminal empires against the Maronis and Gigantes. What is it that makes Vic well-suited to this, and how does he pull it off?
Victor is constantly learning from one of the better minds in the underground crime world. Oz thinks on his feet and makes the right moves over and over again. Sometimes he lets his anger get the better of him, and he’s impulsive, but when he’s moving chess pieces, there’s nobody better. Vic will sit there and watch and listen and observe and take in the information. At the beginning of Episode 6, Oz tells Victor, “These people, we have their loyalty. Do you know why? Because we pay them.” Later on in that episode, what does Vic do to figure out the Squid situation? He tries to pay him off.
So when it comes down to that moment of “God, how are we going to make this work?” he doesn’t just sit back and take orders. He’s learning to be proactive and figure things out for himself. Victor has been able to see that Link and these other guys have this respect, and that seconds-in-command are ambitious as well. This is their moment to rise.
Of course, the biggest Vic moment in the finale is his death at the hands of Oz, moments after calling him “family.” How did you talk through that scene, and how early did you know this was Vic’s fate?
[Showrunner Lauren LeFranc] and I talked about it even before I showed up in New York to start shooting. We knew there would be this arc, this big moment at the end. There was a lot of conversation about leading up to it, just in terms of physically what it was going to be like and feel like and look like. That day was something Colin and I had both metaphorically circled on our calendars. I remember a week before, he was kind of like, “You ready? Got a scene in a week.” And I’m like, “I know, I know, I know.” And then three days before, he’s like, “You know, three days,” and then the day before, “Tomorrow’s the big day!”
The important part of nailing it for Victor is the first half of that scene: this incredibly vulnerable state that he allows himself to get to. It’s pretty soft. It’s slow, and it takes its time, and it’s paced out. Victor is telling Oz, in their own words, “I love you,” basically. That’s the subtext. They’re too macho to say those words to each other, but that’s the feeling. When I read it, I thought it was beautiful, and I wanted to give it air and space. Me and Colin’s coverage was shot at the exact same time, so it all feels very organic and back-and-forth and sweet … right before it isn’t.
How was the experience of filming?
It took all night. We were outdoors, it was a cold winter day in New York. We shot that on Roosevelt Island on the riverbank. It was real silent. It’s gruesome, and it’s brutal. Toward the end of the show, those light moments kind of dissipate and we’re left with something pretty dark and twisted. We’re witnessing Oz turn into something kind of irredeemable. Being on set that day, everyone felt sullen. There was a darkness in the air, there was a hush.
As I watched this season, I kept worrying about Vic. He feels like a tragic character. I was like, “Oh god, don’t kill off this guy, he’s the heart and soul.”
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I thought maybe people wouldn’t care much about Victor since he’s not such a badass. Even Francis is kind of badass, telling Sofia off in that scene. It’s fun to watch. Oz is a badass, Sofia is a badass. Victor is a little bit more sensitive and soft. You can see how much it hurts him to kill Squid, someone he’s known for years. Of course, given more time, he’s changing. I think at the end, if he had to shoot Sofia when she’s about to take out her gun, he wouldn’t feel as bad as he did the first time. But I was afraid people wouldn’t connect with him in that way, because he’s not as “cool” as the others.
But in the responses I’ve gotten so far, people do care about him. I care about him a lot. He’s just a kid in this very crazy, psychotic world where he has to dismember people and murder people. That’s not a normal thing for a 17-year-old kid to go through.
On Runaways, you worked with a lot of younger actors, so this seems like a different beast.
For sure. [At 27] I’m [among] the youngest on this thing, so it was different, but I couldn’t have asked for anything better. It feels like everyone’s on their A game, and to be around that is inspiring. All you’re trying to do is just not be the weak link—just be on par with everybody else’s excellence. I know how hard everyone worked on this show, from the writers to the producers to the cast and crew. Seeing how hard everyone worked, while still being so great at what they do—I don’t want to ever get to the place where I feel comfortable enough to just coast.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
