MEKKO

By Sterlin HARJO

ORATION FILMS - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 2015

Mekko is a homeless Native American parolee who seeks to save his chaotic yet beautiful community from the darkness that threatens it.

Festivals
& Awards

Stockholm IFF 2015
Stockholm Impact
Los Angeles Film Festival 2015
Toronto - TIFF 2015
    • Year of production
    • 2015
    • Genres
    • Drama
    • Countries
    • USA
    • Languages
    • ENGLISH, Other
    • Duration
    • 85 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Sterlin HARJO
    • Synopsis
    • Since childhood Mekko has had a reputation as a seer in his community, able to see into the future. But the community where he grew up seems to be dead, the settlement abandoned after the water became poisoned and the only vision of the future Mekko ever sees is his own death.

      Now older, Mekko has just been freed after 19 years behind bars for killing his cousin. What little remains of his family wants nothing to do with him and he is forced to live on the streets. Despite the difficult circumstances Mekko discovers a semblance of peace in a homeless community of indigenous Native Americans, and in the friendship of Tafy, a waitress in a diner who helps him out with some extra food now and then.

      But there is a darkness in the community. The darkness centers around Bill a violently intense man who terrorizes the weaker members of the group. As Mekko encounters the dangerous Bill, he recalls his grandmother back in the tribal hometown who told him the stories of people possessed by the evil powers of shape-shifter witches.

      When a wheelchair-bound man from the streets turns up dead, everyone knows that Bill is to blame, but they are powerless to bring him to justice. Even Mekko and his old friend, Bunnie, become the victims of Bill's psychotic anger when he brutally beats them in their sleep, killing Bunnie and putting Mekko in the hospital.

      Though Tafv has him stay with her while he recovers, Mekko feels that he is a burden to her, so he decides to go back to the streets and seek vengeance. But now the paradise of the streets is gone, and Mekko is robbed of what little he has.

      With nowhere to turn and no hope, Mekko decides to at least try a positive act and help Allen, a young Native who has turned to drugs get clean. But Bill returns and seeks Mekko out to silence him about Bunnie's murder.

      Seeing in Bill the shape-shifter his grandmother had told him about, Mekko becomes engaged in a violent struggle. He kills Bill, then cuts out his heart to perform the ritual his grandmother taught him for cleansing the sickness the witches bring. With his quest for vengeance complete and the curse lifted, Mekko finds Allen and together they travel to Mekko's abandoned hometown. Mekko sets up camp and relights the community fire to beckon everyone back home.