Quantum Cowboys

A psychedelic peyote-fueled fever dream of a film, traversing multiple formats as a pair of drifters (Kiowa Gordon and John Way) are on a quest to find a legendary musician (Howe Gelb) when they team up with an Indigenous woman (Lily Gladstone) intent on reclaiming her land. Sounds like the setup to a classic Western, right? Instead, it’s the springboard for a deep dive into a multiverse in which a dozen different mediums—including 16mm, paper cutouts, rotoscoping, hand-drawn animation, oil paints, 8k video, collage, and digital animation—are employed to distinguish between the disparate realities navigated by an ensemble of rogues. Cerebral, psychedelic, and just plain silly in turns. This isn’t a refutation of classic westerns but rather a complete rethinking of what the western can be. The movie decolonizes knowledge both by presenting a much more diverse population of the American West, but also by reminding the audience that observation affects reality and that contrary ideas can both be true at the same time. Be prepared to follow a wild story AND possibly change the way you think about reality. Sometimes the opposite of a western is still a western! The complex quantum time theory is blended with philosophical musings about art as the way we understand our history and memories, with gunfights, horses, dance halls, cacti, and saloons!