POCATELLO — Cody Lightning is gaining momentum in film and television, and the movie that gave a boost to his recent surge, “Hey Viktor!,” will be featured at the upcoming Spark of Madness Film Festival.

John Evans, founder and director of the Spark of Madness Film Festival, said Lightning’s movie fits the festival’s theme of focusing on films that have a bit of madness to them but are also connected to the Intermountain West, including native peoples who are a significant part of the culture.

“The spark of madness in his movie is his character driving himself crazy over his identity,” Evans said. “In the end, it’s an inspirational story about finding meaning through art.”

Lightning has been acting in television and movies since he was just 7 years old, his first role coming in the television movie “Geronimo” in 1993. His biggest role as a young actor came when he played young Victor Joseph in the 1998 hit “Smoke Signals.” He has continued to act since then, including a number of short films, with most of his work in Native character roles.

He spent several years living in Boise, but most of his recent life has been spent living and working in Edmonton, Treaty 6, Alberta, Canada, where he is from. Because the acting work was less reliable than he hoped, he has also spent his time working with reservation youth.

“With indigenous cinema and parts so few and far between, maybe one or two a year, we were all fighting over bread crumbs,” Lightning said. “It was consistently slow, and I could have accepted what it was.”

Still working with reservation youth as his momentum in the industry is surging, he said he coached his final youth league hockey game of the season on Saturday. Lightning decided not to just accept it and has continued to persevere over the years, not just going to auditions but going to festivals and meeting other filmmakers who he said would often write roles for him in their next projects.

The role that he said really got the momentum going was playing Biscuits in the five-episode Marvel series “Echo.” He said “Hey Viktor!” was released in 2023 prior to the release of “Echo,” and was born out of the ribbing and joking that was frequent among his friends.

When out and about with his friends, waiting in line for a table at a restaurant, for example, his friends would joke that he should use his fame garnered from “Smoke Signals” to speed things up. It was all good-natured, he said, and very much in line with his natural comedic tendencies.

He calls himself a storyteller who has always used humor, even doing stand-up comedy sometimes. Showing that humor, especially from the perspective of indigenous peoples, was one of the driving forces behind making “Hey Viktor!”

“There is so much trauma when it comes to indigenous stories,” Lightning said. “They are great projects, but they are all so serious in content. In ‘Smoke Signals’ you laughed your head off.”

Although “Hey Viktor!” includes many from the cast of “Smoke Signals,” Lightning said it’s not a sequel. It’s more of a satirical look at trying to get the sequel made through the eyes of its cast. But they are not really playing themselves.

“It’s all the ‘Smoke Signals’ actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves,” he said. “There are some dark moments but it’s mostly laughs.”

Lightning directed “Hey Viktor!” and wrote it with his production partner, Samuel Miller, who together own and operate Lightning Mill Production. Because of that movie, his production company’s next project, “Smudge the Blades,” is getting more traction than “Hey Viktor!” did.

Some other places you can catch Lightning include the 2025 film “Dusk & Dawn,” the 2013 film “Craters of the Moon,” and the Ethan Hawke series “The Lowdown” on FX, which is filming its second season.

Lightning said he currently plans to attend the Spark of Madness Film Festival in Pocatello, which is scheduled for May 21-23. It will be hosted at Idaho State University’s Bengal Theater and the nearby Ballroom. Tickets, already on sale, are $13 for each of the three days or $23 for the whole three-day event. Evans said he currently has a little more than 100 movies, a mixture of full-length features and shorts, scheduled to show at the two venues during the festival.

Evans said films will be shown from 10:30 a.m. to about 7 p.m. each day and the after-parties will be later in the evening. For more information on the Spark of Madness Film Festival and to get your tickets, go to the event’s website at sparkofmadnessfilmfestival.com.