‘Off the Rez’ Debuts at Tribeca Film Festival

‘Off the Rez’ Debuts at Tribeca Film Festival: Shoni Schimmel was like many other teenage girls with a gift for the game of basketball. Ranked among the top 100 high school players in the country, she practiced and played hard and hoped for a Division I athletic scholarship. But Shoni, a Umatilla Indian, faced the unique challenge of living on a reservation and the sense of isolation that created.

The documentary film “Off the Rez,” which premiered Tuesday evening at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and will be shown on TLC on May 14, chronicles Shoni’s junior and senior years of high school and the decision by her parents, Cecilee Moses and Rick Schimmel, to move the family off the Umatilla Indian Reservation so Shoni could get the kind of athletic exposure she needed. Moses, once a gifted basketball player and track athlete, accepted a job coaching girls’ basketball at Franklin High School in Portland, Ore.