Inside everyone is a frontier waiting to be discovered.

The journey begins this November. Discover it for yourself.

Lt. John Dunbar is about to discover the frontier...within himself.


A historical drama about the relationship between a Civil War soldier and a band of Sioux Indians, Kevin Costner's directorial debut was also a surprisingly popular hit, considering its length, period setting, and often somber tone. The film opens on a particularly dark note, as melancholy Union lieutenant John W. Dunbar attempts to kill himself on a suicide mission, but instead becomes an unintentional hero. His actions lead to his reassignment to a remote post in remote South Dakota, where he encounters the Sioux. Attracted by the natural simplicity of their lifestyle, he chooses to leave his former life behind to join them, taking on the name Dances with Wolves. Soon, Dances with Wolves has become a welcome member of the tribe and fallen in love with a white woman who has been raised amongst the tribe. His peaceful existence is threatened, however, when Union soldiers arrive with designs on the Sioux land. Some detractors have criticized the film's depiction of the tribes as simplistic; such objections did not dissuade audiences or the Hollywood establishment, however, which awarded the film seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.




Dances with Wolves is a 1990 American epic western film directed, produced by, and starring Kevin Costner. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake and tells the story of a Union Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and his dealings with a group of Lakota Indians.
Costner developed the film over a period of 5 years, with an initial budget of $15 million. Dances with Wolves had high production values[1] and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. Much of the dialogue is spoken in Lakota with English subtitles. It was shot in South Dakota and Wyoming, and translated by Albert White Hat, the chair of the Lakota Studies Department at Sinte Gleska University.
The film is credited as a leading influence for the revitalization of the Western genre of filmmaking in Hollywood. In 2007, Dances with Wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Defying expectation, Dances with Wolves proved instantly popular, eventually making $184 million in U.S. box office sales, and $424 million in total sales worldwide.[4] It won the Best Picture Academy Award.
As of 2011, the film holds a positive review score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.[5] Because of the film's popular and lasting impact on the image of Native Americans, the Sioux Nation adopted Costner as an honorary member.[6]
In 2007, the Library of Congress selected Dances with Wolves for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.[2]
Native American activist and actor Russell Means was less kind about some aspects of the film's technical accuracy. In 2009, he said "Remember Lawrence of Arabia? That was Lawrence of the Plains. The odd thing about making that movie is that they had a woman teaching the actors the Lakota language, but Lakota has a male-gendered language and a female-gendered language. Some of the Indians and Kevin Costner were speaking in the feminine way. When I went to see it with a bunch of Lakota guys, we were laughing."[7] Other Native Americans like Michael Smith (Sioux), Director of San Francisco's long-running annual American Indian Film Festival, said, "There's a lot of good feeling about the film in the Indian community, especially among the tribes. I think it's going to be very hard to top this one."[8]
According to other sources[which?] the gender-specific Lakota words were used correctly in the movie. Some of the criticism was inspired by the fact that the pronunciation is not authentic since only one of the movie's actors was a native speaker of the language. The movie's dialogues in the native language has been lauded as a remarkable achievement.[9] However, other writers have noted that earlier otherwise English-language films such as Eskimo (1933), Wagon Master (1950), and The White Dawn (1974), had also incorporated Native dialogue.[10]
David Sirota of Salon referred to Dances with Wolves as a “white savior” film, as Dunbar “fully embeds himself in the Sioux tribe and quickly becomes its primary protector”. He argued that its use of the “noble savage” character type “preemptively blunts criticism of the underlying White Savior story. The idea is that a film like Dances With Wolves cannot be bigoted or overly white-centric if it at least shows [characters such as] Kicking Bird and Chief Ten Bears as special and exceptional. This, even though the whole story is about a white guy, saves the day


The first Laserdisc release of Dances with Wolves was on November 15, 1991, by Orion Home Video on a two-disc extended play laserdisc set.[citation needed]
The first Dances with Wolves VHS version was released in 1991. Dances with Wolves has been released to several VHS versions. The limited collector's edition set comes with two VHS tapes, six high gloss 14-by-11-inch (36 cm × 28 cm) Lobby Photos, Dances with Wolves The Illustrated Story Of The Epic Film book, and an organized collector's edition storage case.[citation needed]
Dances with Wolves has been released to DVD on four occasions: the first on November 17, 1998, on a single disc; the second on February 16, 1999, as a two disc set with a DTS Soundtrack; the third was released on May 20, 2003, as a two-disc set featuring the Extended Edition; and the fourth was released on May 25, 2004, as a single disc in full frame.[citation needed]
Dances with Wolves has been released on Blu-ray in Germany on December 5, 2008, in France on 15 April 2009, in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2009, and in the United States on January 11, 2011. The German, French, and American releases feature the Extended Edition, while the British release features the theatrical cut

Release Date: November 9, 1990

Distrib: Orion Pictures


Boxoffice: $184,208,848 2013: $356,586,200