Neo Frontier Cinema: Rewriting the Frontier Narrative from the Margins in Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010), Songs My Brother Taught Me (Chloe Zhao, 2015) and The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017)

This article discusses Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Chloe Zhao’s Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017) as contemporary rewritings of the Western genre and frontier mythology. I argue that the three films play the mythologies of the American West against the realities and consequences of settler colonialism, provide alternative perspectives on the politics of empire, construct the Western frontier as a contact zone, and challenge the original epic story of linear conquest by redefining what it means to travel or live in the Great American desert. I also underline how these films differ in their preferred focus for cultural and political rewriting: Meek’s Cutoff mainly centers on its alternative feminine perspective and on a deflation of the myth in its original historical terrain, while Zhao’s films are more about producing a postcolonial perspective on the contemporary West as a marginalized yet fascinating frontera.