“Frybread Face and Me” is a coming-of-age story set in 1990. An adolescent Navajo boy growing up in San Diego spends a summer with his grandmother on the Navajo Nation.

Director Billy Luther said the cast was all Navajo, save one member, who is an Alaska Native. He also hired Navajo crew members.

“We didn’t have to try to get it right. We got it right because we live this, and this was our world.”

“I just wanted to cast people who understand this Navajo world. I wanted most of these people to speak Navajo. I just don’t see it being any other way. I think if I were working with a non-Native crew, I would have had to tell them how to do it, what colors, and what things go on the wall,” said Luther.