OKMULGEE, Okla. – The opening voice over in “Frybread Face and Me” precisely sets more than just the tone for the coming-of-age feature film. Against a blank, black screen the narrator states, “My grandmother once told me in Navajo storytelling, symbols mean more than facts and time means nothing at all.” With this we get full on cultural context, setting, and the kind of kinship relations a good reservation tale has.

Filmmaker Billy Luther (Dine/Hopi/Laguna Pueblo) recently spoke about his film and career path with Mvskoke Media’s LiveWire.

The film follows Benny, an 11-year-old Navajo/Hopi/Pueblo city kid from San Diego, sent to spend the summer of 1990 with his maternal grandmother on the Navajo Reservation while his parents sort out their marriage. There, he experiences a fish-out-of-water summer with his culturally-grounded cousin Dawn, gets a crash course on being Navajo, and remains true to himself. When his disconnected uncle asks him the gibe, “Are you a cowboy or a cowgirl?” he answers with the already set understanding of who he is, “I’m just Benny,” he replies.