‘East of Wall’ bridges South Dakota grit with Hollywood glamour

Wrong turn leads to Sundance win for West River rancher

(Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic)

Tabatha Zimiga’s 1,200-acre Flyin’ N Ranch, tucked among the rolling hills of western South Dakota, is the unlikely backdrop for a Sundance-winning movie.

Even more impossible to imagine, the tenacious cowgirl who grew up east of Wall has the leading role in a Hollywood production premiering at cinemas nationwide this weekend.

But “East of Wall” — as the hybrid of fiction and documentary inspired by Zimiga’s life is fittingly named — has done more than put her story on the silver screen. It’s brought together small-town South Dakota kids and seasoned Hollywood actors, knitting a friendship between a rancher and a Los Angeles director. And that real-life bond mirrors the film’s themes of resilience, community and the hard-earned beauty of the plains.

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A wrong turn, a lifelong bond

The film’s director, Kate Beecroft, hadn’t planned on making a South Dakota story. In the early days of the pandemic, the California native was on a road trip with her cinematographer when she took a wrong turn into the tiny town of Oelrichs in Fall River County.

“I met a woman there who told me, ‘If you want a really amazing story, head east of Wall and find a woman named Tabitha,’” Beecroft said during an interview on The Dakota Scout’s Scouting Lounge podcast this week. “I pulled up to their ranch, saw these intimidatingly badass teenage girls, and met Tabby. She looked at me and said, ‘So you’re here to see some real cowgirl shit?’”

Beecroft didn’t just visit — she stayed. For three years, she embedded herself in Zimiga’s world, learning horsemanship, bottle-feeding colts on the living room floor and writing a script that became “East of Wall.”

The story follows a horse trainer juggling financial strain and unresolved grief while mentoring a group of wayward teens. It’s fiction, but the setting and the characters’ spirit are rooted in reality — a reality of early mornings, branding season, 100 head of cattle and as many as 50 horses.

Shot almost entirely in western South Dakota with most of the cast and crew sourced locally, Zimiga has a lead role alongside Hollywood stars Scoot McNairy and Jennifer Ehle.

The movie’s emotional authenticity struck a chord at Sundance, where it won the Audience Choice Award, and caught the attention of Sony Pictures Classics, which released it nationwide Friday.

Music from country-pop star Shaboozi, one of Zimiga’s favorite artists, adds a contemporary energy to the soundtrack.

Wall-area teens who frequent the ranch also dot the film’s credits.

“I don’t even know how to explain it,” Zimiga said of her unofficial mentorship program for local teens. “They just end up here… I take them in, and they start riding horses. Then I start hauling them to rodeos.”

For Zimiga — a self-described private person — showing the film to her neighbors at a private screening in Sioux Falls earlier this week was more nerve-wracking than facing Sundance audiences.

“That was one of the hardest moments I’ve had in my entire life,” she said.

The journey from wrong turn to red carpet took nearly five years — three spent living the story, two making the movie. And for both women, “East of Wall” is as much about the friendships forged as the film itself.

“It wasn’t really hard to trust Kate. It’s hard to trust the world,” said Zimiga, who watched a Hollywood filmmaker become comfortable in a foreign world too. “And now she’s seen the beauty and the heartbreak of it all.”