In ‘East of Wall,’ filmmaker Beecroft builds a remarkable docufiction world

Cinema | August 19th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

Shortly following its world premiere in January, first-time feature filmmaker Kate Beecroft’s “East of Wall” won the NEXT section’s audience award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. A persuasive blend of nonfiction and fiction elements, the movie’s stunning South Dakota setting serves as an additional character in the ensemble. Populated by a number of newcomers and nonactors who in many cases inhabit versions of their real-life selves, Beecroft places two talented professionals — Jennifer Ehle and Scoot McNairy — in vital roles, seamlessly integrating the veterans with the core group led by Tabatha Zimiga and her daughter Porshia Zimiga.

Beecroft has recounted the practicalities of how she constructed “East of Wall” over a period of several years. Sundance/indie film aficionados will instantly draw comparisons to Chloe Zhao’s Pine Ridge-set features “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and “The Rider.” Along with the South Dakota location and the rural milieus focused on horseback riding and intense relationships between caretakers and animals (both “The Rider” and “East of Wall” include stunning scenes in which protagonists calm and commune with horses), both Zhao and Beecroft sculpt magic from “embedded” relationships with performers asked to place a great deal of trust in their respective storytellers.

The elder Zimiga portrays a gloriously complex mother, daughter, partner and friend. Tabatha’s distinctive look includes a hairstyle of long blonde locks on one side and a close shave on the other — referenced within the story as both a fierce symbol of equine identification and her gifts as a rider and trainer. The haircut can even be earned by the rough-edged teenagers who live under her care on the 3,000 acres previously overseen by her late husband, who took his own life. Those kids, who practice enough trick riding and horsemanship to help Tabatha sell at local shows and on TikTok, may not always make good choices but they certainly recognize the matriarchal power of Tabatha’s eye-of-the-hurricane presence.

McNairy’s wealthy Roy Waters could easily have been reduced to a single-minded villain, but Beecroft invests in a subtler and more satisfying way of engineering narrative conflict by filling out the character with critical details that explain his personal interest in working so closely with Porshia. Waters openly admits that he stands to benefit from the financial terms of the deal he puts in front of Tabatha. Her wariness is shared by us. But making ends meet is only one of many burdens faced by Tabatha, whose strained relationship with Porshia mirrors her own difficult bond with mother Tracey (Ehle), who carries herself with enough self-awareness to acknowledge the extent to which she messed things up with Tabatha.

The three generations of women at the heart of “East of Wall” point in the direction of feminine solidarity that Beecroft so clearly values. In one emotionally raw interlude, a group of women disclose painful memories to one another while drinking around a campfire (Tabatha’s real-life mother is among that number). Beecroft handles nearly every element of her film with the confidence of a veteran moviemaker. Out of Sundance, a small number of critics expressed reservations about one thing or another, but I belong to the group of admirers who recognize Beecroft’s respect for her audience. “East of Wall,” like the wide open spaces in and around the Badlands, offers enough questions without answers and lots of room to sit with our own thoughts.

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