Apache

Apache (Apachen, 1973) is a DEFA Western you can watch online on iFILM, headlined by Gojko Mitić, the face of East Germany's "Indianerfilme." Director Gottfried Kolditz turns the genre inside out, putting the camera with the hunted rather than the cavalry.

The frontier between the United States and Mexico, 1848. The Mimbreño people hold an uneasy peace with the newcomers until an American geologist named Johnson arrives, hungry for the ore buried under their land. A massacre at the Santa Rita settlement and a bounty paid per scalp leave only a handful of Apache alive, led by their chief Ulzana. Vengeance is all they have left.

Mitić, the star of dozens of East German frontier films, plays Ulzana with cold restraint, and the violence reads as colonial greed instead of adventure. Stream Apache (1973) online on iFILM.