‘East of Wall,’ 2025’s Most Underrated Film, Is Now On Netflix

By Anna Menta

We’re less than a month away from 2026 Oscars, which means film fans everywhere are hustling to catch up on the critically-acclaimed 2025 titles that they missed. But any true cinephile knows that plenty of really, really good movies get passed over by the Academy every year. East of Wall—which Decider’s Karen Kemmerle correctly identified as “a moving portrait of the struggles and freedom that come with living in the new America West,” in Decider’s Best Movies of 2025 list—is one such movie. And now that East of Wall is streaming on Netflix, is easier than every to catch up on one of last year’s most-overlooked gem.

Writer/director Kate Beecroft took an unusual approach to the film, which is her feature directorial debut. She didn’t start with a script—she started with a road trip with her cinematographer, Austin Shelton, driving around out west, looking for interesting stories to tell.

“I met this woman, and she told me, ‘If you want a real story, head east of Wall, and there’ll be a woman named Tabatha waiting for you,'” Beecroft told Collider in an interview out of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where East of Wall premiered. “That’s exactly what I did.”

Photo: ©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Beecroft lived with Tabatha and her daughter Porshia Zimiga on their ranch in South Dakota for three years, completely immersing herself in their lives. “I had never seen anybody with such power and force as these women,” Beecroft said. “I was just falling so madly in love with them all the time that I became obsessed, and I just needed to make this film about them.”

Beecroft didn’t just make East of Wall about Tabatha and Porshia Zimiga, she made it with them. After meeting the family, Beecroft did write a traditional script, about a woman named Tabatha and her daughter Porshia, grieving the recent death of their husband/father, and struggling to make ends meet on the ranch. Both Tabatha and Porshia play themselves in the film, alongside seasoned actors like Scoot McNairy, who plays a man named Roy Waters, who wants to buy Tabatha’s ranch, and Jennifer Ehle, who plays Tabatha’s mother.

But Beecroft was very open to improvisation on set, especially when it came to the young Porshia Zimiga. “We can’t have a false note,” Beecroft explained. “We can’t have something that feels like me, to be honest, because it’s their life, and I don’t come from their life. I learned from them, and they’re directors, as well, in my mind.”

The result of this intimate, unconventional approach is a unique, authentic film—a breath of fresh air amid the disingenuous, formulaic Hollywood films that dominate both the box office, and, often, the awards season. The film was released in limited theaters in August without much fanfare, and has largely been overlooked in the awards circuit, although it did nab two Independent Spirit Awards nomination, for Best Breakthrough Performance for Tabatha Zimiga and for Best First Feature for Beecroft.

But East of Wall doesn’t need an Oscar nomination to be worth your time. This great little underrated film is just clicks away, now streaming on Netflix.