Woman Walks Ahead

In the late 1880s, a widowed New York artist named Catherine Weldon travels alone to the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota to paint a portrait of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull. Her arrival draws hostility from Silas Groves, an army officer determined to keep order and to see the remaining Native people removed from their land, and she becomes drawn into the community's struggle to hold on to its territory. As she and Sitting Bull form a friendship, she must decide whether to stand with him and his people.

The film is directed by Susanna White, whose earlier features include Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang and Our Kind of Traitor; it came third in the chronological list of her directed works and was followed by Andor and Prima Facie. Steven Knight wrote the screenplay, and the production was handled by Andrea Calderwood, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Jessica Chastain plays Catherine Weldon, with Michael Greyeyes as Sitting Bull, Sam Rockwell as Groves, Ciarán Hinds as James McLaughlin, Chaske Spencer as Chaska and Bill Camp as General Crook. The credited cast numbers 44, with 41 credited crew members.

Released in June 2018 and running 103 minutes, the film is a British and American production in the drama, history and western genres. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from around 9,400 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 from roughly 210 votes, while the critics' score stands at 5.9 from 44 reviews, so audiences have rated it somewhat more warmly than critics.