The BygoneMovies like The Bygone
- Key Features:
- Missing person, Native American culture, Ranch life, Mystery, Social issues, Rural setting, Cultural conflict, Search for truth
- Tone:
- serious, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Independent film viewers, Western genre enthusiasts, Socially conscious audiences
- Emotional Arc:
- Hope → Despair → Acceptance
The Bygone

When a young rancher crosses paths with a Lakota girl from a nearby reservation, her mysterious disappearance sparks a search that uncovers a harrowing past and hints at a dire future.
The Bygone
When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.

Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn.

When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.

When a grieving college professor confronts two hunters she catches trespassing on her property, she's drawn into an escalating battle of wills with catastrophic consequences.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

In 1909, Willie Boy and his love Carlota go on the run after he accidentally shoots her father in a confrontation gone terribly wrong. With President Taft coming to the area, the local sheriff leads two Native American trackers seeking justice for their “murdered” tribal leader.

Follow the 10-year reunion of the Deadwood camp to celebrate South Dakota's statehood. Former rivalries are reignited, alliances are tested and old wounds are reopened, as all are left to navigate the inevitable changes that modernity and time have wrought.

As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

In the desert area of Hat Creek, cows are found partially devoured and the farmers believe that a wolf is attacking the cattle. The alcoholic Sheriff Annie Flynn is called by the local farmer Rob Horn to witness the remains of an animal to request reimbursement from the government and for an accident with a tank truck that is blocking the road.

Drama about a father and son who set out to find their missing daughter/sister with the help of an American headhunter.

Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.

In the Old West, a 17-year-old Scottish boy teams up with a mysterious gunman to find the woman with whom he is infatuated.

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

An FBI agent teams with the town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.

A former slave who arrives in Yellowstone City, Montana, a desolate former boomtown now on the decline, looking for a place to call home. On that same day, a local prospector discovers gold - and is murdered.

The neighbors of a frontier family turn on them when it is suspected that their beloved adopted daughter was stolen from the Kiowa tribe.

When a handful of settlers survive an Apache attack on their wagon train they must put their lives into the hands of Comanche Todd, a white man who has lived with the Comanches most of his life and is wanted for the murder of three men.

After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.

Lizzy is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, and when a newlywed couple arrive at a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy's fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events.

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.

A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.

Lennon, a new back-country ranger, travels alone through the dangerous wilderness, hoping to uncover the origins of a tragedy that has haunted her since she was a child.

On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.

A group of archaeologists uncover a strange structure in Northern Canada, dating over ten thousand years before the present. The team finds themselves isolated when their communication systems fail and it's not long before they begin to feel the effects of the solitude.

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over after a horse crushed his skull at a rodeo. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of the United States.

Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.

Rollins' gang wants to grab land by inciting the settlers in a war against the Indians but Winnetou and Old Shatterhand try to keep the peace, until Rollins frames Winnetou up for the murder of Jicarilla Chief's son.

A murdered girl is found under a bridge on a remote road and indigenous detective Jay Swan gets the case. Jay finds that no-one is that interested in solving the murder of an indigenous teenager and he is forced to work alone.

In 1870s New Mexico, a half-breed kills a bigoted sheriff in self-defense but the posse that eventually hunts him finds itself in dangerous territory.

A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.

November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.

On a trip to the beach, a teenage girl named Tobe meets a charismatic stranger named Harlan, who dresses like a cowboy and claims to be a former ranch hand. The pair feel an instant attraction and begin a relationship, but her father, a lawman, is suspicious of her lover.

On her b-day, settler's daughter Apanatschi receives her father's secret gold mine but greedy neighboring prospectors resort to murder and kidnapping in order to get the gold, forcing the girl and her brother to seek Winnetou's protection.

After a cavalry group is massacred by the Cheyenne, only two survivors remain: Honus, a naive private devoted to his duty, and Cresta, a young woman who had lived with the Cheyenne two years and whose sympathies lie more with them than with the US government. Together, they must try to reach the cavalry's main base camp. As they travel onward, Honus is torn between his growing affection for Cresta.

A Montana bounty hunter is sent into the wilderness to track three escaped prisoners. Instead he sees something that puzzles him. Later with a female Native Indian history professor, he returns to find some answers.

In 1825, English peer Lord John Morgan is cast adrift in the American West. Captured by Sioux Indians, Morgan is at first targeted for quick extinction, but the tribesmen sense that he is worthy of survival. He eventually passes the many necessary tests that will permit him to become a member of the tribe.

Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.

When an 8-year-old girl mysteriously vanishes on Caddo Lake, a series of past deaths and disappearances begin to link together, forever altering a broken family’s history.

Edee, in the aftermath of an unfathomable event, finds herself unable to stay connected to the world she once knew and in the face of that uncertainty, retreats to the magnificent, but unforgiving, wilds of the Rockies. After a local hunter brings her back from the brink of death, she must find a way to live again.

At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.

A naked teenage boy covered in blood appears at a remote sheriff's station one year after the brutal unsolved murder of a local girl. Now Sheriff Jack Shepherd, guilt ridden over the girl's murder, must confront his own demons as he desperately searches for the boy's true identity and possible victims. Little does Jack realize that he has started down a path that will bring him face to face with an unthinkable horror. Before sunrise the living will pay for the pain the dead have suffered.

Two miners agree to guide a mysterious woman, who has appeared in their camp from nowhere, to a nearby town; but soon, because of her erratic behavior, they begin to suspect that her true purpose is quite different.

In a remote corner of the wild country, a bloody war rages. Travis is a bounty hunter with one last hope of redemption. Gutjuk is a young Indigenous man trying to save the last of his family. Together they embark on a manhunt, which unravels a secret that ultimately pits them against each other.

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

A tender drama unfolds between a grieving father and a troubled teenage girl as they drive northbound along the quiet outback roads of Australia. What she doesn't know is that between stops, he is leaving behind a bloody trail of bodies in a revenge motivated killing spree.

A young woman struggles to defend her Sámi heritage in a world where xenophobia is on the rise, climate change is threatening reindeer herding, and young people choose suicide in the face of collective desperation.

A family vacation takes a terrifying turn when parents Paul and Wendy discover their young daughter has vanished without a trace. Stopping at nothing to find her, the search for the truth leads to a shocking revelation.

Respected black cavalry Sergeant Brax Rutledge stands court-martial for raping and killing a white woman and murdering her father, his superior officer.

Three strong-willed women strive to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer forced to subdue a troubled client; a wife and mother whose plans to construct her dream home reveal fissures in her marriage; and a lonely ranch hand who forms an ambiguous bond with a young law student.

A reformed hunter becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

On a trip home to visit her father, Jenny is thrown into a world of mystery, horror and legend when she is called upon by 3000 year old spirits of the Neverlake to help return their lost artifacts and save the lives of missing children.

A mother, enduringly traumatized by the disappearance of her three-year old daughter 15 years ago, has cut herself off from her ex-husband and son. However, when a troubled young woman with a checkered past enters her life, old psychic wounds painfully resurface, as does the illogical and increasingly irrational hope that the young woman may be the daughter she lost so long ago.

A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.

A legendary Native American-hating Army captain nearing retirement in 1892 is given one last assignment: to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory back to his Montana reservation.

While investigating police corruption in his department, undercover cop Buster McHenry is forced to participate in a heist, leading to innocent casualties and the theft of an ancient Lakota tribal spear. After McHenry ends up severely wounded, he is taken in by Native American Hank Storm, who is out to recover the spear and avenge the death of a loved one in the heist.

A man, who years earlier mysteriously abandoned his family and isolated himself in a small northern town, returns for one last chance to reconnect with his troubled daughter. When she goes missing, he risks everything to find her, including exposing the fact that he is becoming invisible.

Told from the man's perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

There is a global civil war between men and women. A teenage girl tries to escape this reality and arrives at a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old, bedridden woman who stays in contact with the world through her radio.

Four former harlots try to leave the wild west (Colorado, to be exact) and head north to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately someone from Cody's past won't let it happen that easily.

The Parkers, reclusive people who cling to ancient customs, find their secret lives threatened when a torrential downpour and the death of the family matriarch forces daughters Iris and Rose to assume special responsibilities.

Sayen is hunting down the men who murdered her grandmother. Using her training and knowledge of nature, she is able to turn the tables on them, learning of a conspiracy from a corporation that threatens her people's ancestral lands.

Nancy becomes increasingly convinced she was kidnapped as a child. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief.

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behavior undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphosis, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.

A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-to-one combat on the early frontier.

In the 1880s western "Traded", a father must leave his ranch for Dodge City to save his daughter from an old enemy, putting his reputation as the fastest draw in the west to the test.

The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated women begin to intersect.

A scout leading a wagon train through hostile Indian country gets involved with a Sioux chief's daughter.

A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.

After her father dies, a young woman returns to her Yorkshire village for the first time in 15 years to claim the family farm she believes is hers.

It is 1879 in the Dakota Territories, a band of men who set out to find and recover a family of settlers that has mysteriously vanished from their home. Expecting the offenders to be a band of fierce natives, but they soon discover that the real enemy stalks them from below.

With their father in prison for murder, siblings Alison and Brandon are instantly considered suspects when a string of killings plagues their town, and they must fight to clear their names.

After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

The boyfriend of an abducted woman never gives up the search as the abductor looks on.

Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.

Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry. What seems like a simple investigation unearths an intricate web of crime, corruption, human trafficking, and coordinated exploitation of indigenous people’s land. Jay must bury his differences with young local cop Josh, so together they can bring justice to Goldstone.

While confronting the disapproving father of his girlfriend Lola, Native American man Willie Boy kills the man in self-defense, triggering a massive manhunt, led by Deputy Sheriff Christopher Cooper.

A mother of two inherits a home from her aunt. On the first night in the new home she is confronted with murderous intruders and fights for her daughters’ lives. Sixteen years later the daughters reunite at the house, and that is when things get strange...

When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

Newly arrived to a remote desert town, Catherine and Matthew are tormented by a suspicion when their two teenage children mysteriously vanish.

A prospector sells his wife and daughter to another gold miner for the rights to a gold mine. Twenty years later, the prospector is a wealthy man who owns much of the old west town named Kingdom Come. But changes are brewing and his past is coming back to haunt him. A surveyor and his crew scouts the town as a location for a new railroad line and a young woman suddenly appears in the town and is evidently the man's daughter.

A young cattle farmer is approached by an unscrupulous veterinarian to make a shady deal with a notorious beef trader.

In 1989, six year old Martin Bristoll was kidnapped from his backyard swing in Minersville Pennsylvania. Graham Sutter, a psychotic recluse, kept Martin imprisoned on his derelict pig farm, forcing him to witness and participate in unspeakable horrors. Chosen at random, his victim's screams were drowned out by the rural countryside. For five years, Martin's whereabouts have remained a mystery, until 17 year old Allison Miller comes to live with her Uncle, Jonathan. While exploring her new surroundings, Allison discovers things aren't quite right at the farmhouse down the road. Her curiosity disturbs a hornet's nest of evil and despair that once torn open, can never be closed.

Set in a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity, our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist. In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders, Sal Frieland stumbles onto a young woman who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realizes it may not be the end of crime but the beginning. Known only as 'The Girl', Sal must find her before he becomes the next victim.

In the grim Alaskan winter, a naturalist hunts for wolves blamed for killing a local boy, but he soon finds himself swept into a chilling mystery.

Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.

When the quiet and amiable Vann Siegert drifts into town, no one suspects the evil that lies beneath the surface. Despite his easy charm, Vann is merely a reflection of what those he encounters want him to be. Soon, as locals start to disappear, it becomes clear that an eerie subtraction is at work in the sleepy hamlet.

With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memories are shattered when he finds his family torn apart by his greedy brother and hard-drinking father.

Following the death of her mother, a young woman returns home to Niagara Falls and becomes entangled in the memory of a kidnapping she claims to have witnessed as a child.

With the world under attack by deadly creatures who hunt by sound, a teen and her family seek refuge outside the city and encounter a mysterious cult.

The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy on a mission of 'justice', which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, 'Rooster' Cogburn because he has 'true grit', and a reputation of getting the job done.


