Locarno Film Festival: “Keep Quiet” Speaks to Silence
Keep Quiet is the fifth film from director Vincent Grashaw. He’s directing from a script written by Zach Montague that Grashaw came across while browsing The Black List. From The Black List to world-premiering at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, Keep Quiet brings a story from an Indigenous reservation to the big screen. It’s a script about trying to keep the peace in a place where many have never known a sense of calm. Led by a performance by an always-great Lou Diamond Phillips, Keep Quiet is the personification of frustration reaching its boiling point.
Phillips plays Teddy Sharpe, the sort of scruffy, always-too-tired cop archetype who doesn’t want to work with the bright-eyed new arrival to the tribal police force. Sandra Scala (Dana Namerode) applied for a job in the middle of nowhere to run away from something. Unbeknownst to her, she’s running to a place that was barely holding itself together until the return of Richie (Elisha Pratt) cracked the town’s wound wide open. Richie is a fugitive and a member of one of the violent reservation gangs. Teddy and Sandra try to hold the town together, but the depth of the painful secrets that come to light is too heavy for anyone to handle.
courtesy of Visit Films
Aside from Richie’s return, one of the inciting incidents of Keep Quiet is the suicide of a young boy. The source of the unbearable pain he felt he had to carry on his own isn’t revealed until nearer to the halfway point. By then, the audience has seen Teddy and Sandra butt heads over procedure and protocol. When they respond to a run-of-the-mill call, Sandra wants to follow the rules and run the names to see if they have any outstanding warrants. Teddy tells her that’s not their job. They are there to keep things at bay, to make sure the people in town make it home at the end of the day. This is a town of people who are looking for something that will change their current predicament.
courtesy of Visit Films
That’s why the gangs are so powerful. As Richie puts it, “this ain’t gang shit, it’s fucking family.” Historically, reservations have been set up to fail. It’s no secret that Indigenous people have not been treated well throughout American history, and this adds to the current restlessness. There’s a lack of generational wealth that makes it difficult to see a life beyond the reservation. Keep Quiet spotlights the pain that exists and how there’s no good outlet for any of it. It’s the best selling point for joining a gang. Here’s a family, here’s a brotherhood. They can give you food, money, and a family. Hope. All they ask in return is loyalty that’s proven through violence. Keep Quiet makes the reality of its young characters perfectly clear and, once the town’s secret is revealed, shows the audience how easily predators can take advantage of people who are simply looking for answers.
One of the most striking shots in the film is the flashing red-and-blue police lights as they cut through the rural emptiness of the reservation. The sight of these lights doesn’t instill comfort in most Indigenous people, even if they bring someone like Teddy, whose actions are guided by a desire to do right by the community. Keep Quiet shows the difficult task of finding a place in this world and demonstrates how easy it is for someone to take advantage of the innate human desire to belong.
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