TULSA — Choctaw filmmaker, Colleen Thurston, announces the launch of the Drowned Land 2025 Community Tour, a multi-community screening tour spotlighting the Kiamichi River’s story of sovereignty, stewardship, and ongoing protection efforts. Led by
award-winning impact producer and founder of Good Trade Productions, Amber Morning Star Byars, the tour will bring the film to audiences across Eastern Oklahoma from December 11-16.
Drowned Land is a feature documentary that explores the fight to preserve the Kiamichi River, and the reckoning with a cycle of land loss for the Indigenous diaspora and the community at large. Since premiering at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington D.C. in March 2025, the film has been celebrated for its powerful cultural lens connecting past, present, and future. It has earned multiple honors, including Best Documentary at the Circle Cinema Film Festival (July 2025), Best Oklahoma Documentary at the
deadCenter Film Festival (July 2025), and Best Emerging Filmmaker at the Thin Line Film Festival (April 2025).
“Colleen Thurston masterfully connects the dots between past injustices and present-day exploitation, reminding us that history doesn’t just repeat itself; it floods back with a vengeance...or worse, disappears.” — Alan Ng, Film Threat.
The tour will include free screenings with complimentary concessions and filmmaker Q&A sessions. Film participants and local partners will join select stops to deepen dialogue and celebrate community storytelling.
Tour Dates & Locations
12/11 McAlester, OK — APEX Cinema 10, 6:30PM
12/12 Durant, OK — Choctaw Casino Cinemas, 6:30PM
12/13 Antlers, OK — Cinema One, 2:00PM
12/14 Eufaula, OK — Legacy on Main Street, 2:00PM
12/15 Idabel, OK — Mary H. Heron Community Conference Center, Museum of the Red River, 6:30PM
12/16 Tahlequah, OK — Tahlequah Performing Arts Center, 6:30PM
About the Film
In the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Kiamichi River is a bastion of eco-diversity. A Texas corporation seeks to dam and build a hydroelectric plant on the river. For a group of locals, theirs is a generations-long struggle with resource extraction and displacement that began with the Trail of Tears. While the river drives the narrative, the director reflects on her Choctaw grandfather’s role in designing and building dams for the Army Corps of Engineers which displaced countless Oklahomans, many Native. Interwoven are the stories of the river’s advocates—residents, Choctaw culture-keepers and scientists—who have come together to protect the river.
About the Filmmaker
Colleen Thurston (Director; she/her) is a filmmaker and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has produced non-fiction film and video content for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, PBS, and federal, tribal, and nonprofit organizations. Her films have screened at international festivals and been broadcast nationwide, with support from Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, the Redford Center, and Creative Capital. Colleen is the founder of the Indigenous Moving Image Archive project and has curated programs for the Momentary, National Gallery of Art, UCLA Film & Television Archive, Vidiots, and multiple film festivals. She is the project producer for the Native Lens video series (Rocky Mountain PBS/KSUT Tribal Radio) and serves as a senior programmer at Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Her debut feature, Drowned Land, explores cycles of displacement and environmental justice within the Choctaw Nation. Colleen is a 2024–25 International Documentary Association Fellow and a 2025–27 Tulsa Artist Fellow. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
June 8, 2026
