Wind River key art
Wind River poster
CompleteFilm · 2017 · The Weinstein Company / Lionsgate

Wind River

Sheridan's first real film as director, and the angriest thing he has made.

Sheridan's credit: Writer, Director

Quick answer

Wind River is the 2017 murder mystery Taylor Sheridan wrote and directed, set on Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation, starring Jeremy Renner as a wildlife tracker and Elizabeth Olsen as the FBI agent assigned to a case the system barely counts.

What Wind River Is

A young Arapaho woman is found dead in the snow miles from shelter. A Fish and Wildlife tracker who knows the terrain and a young FBI agent who knows the procedure have to work a case that federal jurisdiction is designed to lose.

The film closes on a title card about missing Indigenous women — the only demographic for whom no missing-persons statistics are kept — and that card is the point of the whole picture. It is Sheridan's most explicitly political work and the one he directed himself after Vile, an early low-budget horror film he made in 2011 that bears no resemblance to anything since.

It completes the loose trilogy with Sicario and Hell or High Water: three films about jurisdiction at the American margins, each one about who the law is actually built to serve.

A follow-up, Wind River: The Next Chapter, was made without Sheridan — directed by Kari Skogland, written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, with Martin Sensmeier stepping up as the lead. It was shot in 2023 and has had a famously slow road to release.

Why Yellowstone Fans Should Care

Wind River is where Sheridan's Native American storytelling in the Dutton universe comes from — Thomas Rainwater's Broken Rock reservation plotlines, the jurisdiction arguments, and Gil Birmingham himself, who plays Rainwater in Yellowstone and the grieving father here.

Watch this and the reservation storylines in Yellowstone read differently: less like a subplot, more like the thing he actually wanted to write about.

Wind River FAQ

Did Taylor Sheridan direct Wind River?

Yes — he wrote and directed it. It is the film most often called his directorial debut, though he had directed the 2011 horror film Vile earlier.

Is Wind River based on a true story?

The case is fictional, but the crisis it depicts — missing and murdered Indigenous women, and the jurisdictional gaps that stall investigations — is real, and the film ends on a title card about it.

Is Taylor Sheridan involved in the Wind River sequel?

No. Wind River: The Next Chapter was directed by Kari Skogland and written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman.

What should I watch it with?

Sicario and Hell or High Water. The three films are usually treated as a trilogy about law and land on the American frontier.

Not a Yellowstone Spinoff

Wind River shares a creator with the Dutton saga, not a timeline. If you came looking for the ranch, the full universe guide — eight series, one family tree — is a click away.

Explore the Yellowstone universe