Pow!
Pow! is an Emmy-nominated animated comedy short film about a Native American kid scrambling to charge his dying video game console at a bustling intertribal powwow, who learns that loving video games and loving your culture aren’t mutually exclusive.
Created by a largely Indigenous team of Native American animation professionals and allies, Pow! is a love letter to Joey’s time growing up on the Tulalip reservation of Washington State, where his mom often dragged him to powwows as a kid.
Pow! was funded in part by Pop Culture Collaborative’s Becoming America grant, with additional support from FlickerLab.
Pow! screened at nearly 100 film festivals during its run, winning top animation awards at nearly two dozen festivals, including Sidewalk Film Festival, Nevada City Film Festival, and Toronto Animation Arts Festival International.
Pow! also took part in dozens of community screenings, including NDN Collective’s Indigenous People’s Day concert, alongside the SXSW award-winning documentary Remaining Native, and selection as part of New York International Children’s Film Festival’s Kid Flicks national touring program.
Distributed by FNX and amplified by Indigenous.TV, Pow! content was viewed over two million times across social media. The arts organization Amplifier distributed a Pow! Teacher’s Toolkit to 20,000 teachers representing over a million students, which was featured by NPR’s All Things Considered.
Salon named it one of the best animated works of 2025, and Academy Award nominated actor Mark Ruffalo joined a team of dozens of Indigenous streamers to play Among Us and uplift the film on Twitch, which was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitch’s front page.
Notable Festival Placements
2025 Cordillera International Film Festival – Winner – Best Indigenous Film
2025 Hawai‘i International Film Festival
2025 Calgary International Film Festival
2025 MaoriLand Film Festival
2025 Indy Shorts International Film Festival
2025 Tallgrass Film Festival
2025 Nevada City Film Festival – Winner – Best Animated Film
2025 Newport Beach Film Festival
2025 Santa Fe International Film Festival
2025 RiverRun Film Festival
2025 Cleveland International Film Festival
2025 deadCenter Film Festival
2025 AmDocs Film Festival
2025 Athens International Film And Video Festival
2026 New York International Children's Film Festival
2026 REGARD - Saguenay International Short Film Festival
2026 Toronto Animation Arts Festival International - Winner - Best Family Film
2026 AfroAnimation Summit - Nominee - Best Animated Short
2026 Cambria Film Festival - Winner - Best Family Film
2026 Tonkawa Film Festival - Winner - Best Native American Film
2025 Palm Springs International Shortsfest
2025 Bentonville Film Festival
2025 Hamptons International Film Festival
2025 Sidewalk Film Festival – Winner – Best Animated Film
2025 Seattle International Film Festival
2025 San Diego Comic Con International Film Festival
2025 Chicago International Film Festival
2025 Vancouver International Film Festival
2025 Montclair Film Festival