Where Was ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Filmed? Here Are The Real-Life Osage Locations Where Martin Scorsese Filmed

When the United States government forced the Native American population to relocate to reservations in Oklahoma, it was assumed the land was worthless. But, as viewers will see in Martin Scorsese’s new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon—which is now playing in theaters worldwide—not all of the land was, in fact, worthless. The people of the Osage Nation discovered oil on their reservation and became some of the wealthiest people in the country.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true story of how white men murdered dozens of Osage Native Americans in an attempt to inherit the wealth of their oil-rich land. Scorsese and his team worked closely with the Native Americans in the Osage Nation in order to accurately depict the story. In addition to casting 44 Osage actors in the film—not including the hundreds of background actors—the entire movie was filmed on location, on traditional Osage land.

Read on to learn more about the Killers of the Flower Moon filming locations.

Where was Killers of the Flower Moon filmed?

Killers of the Flower Moon was filmed on location in Oklahoma, on the traditional lands of the Osage people. Before production began, Scorsese and his cast and crew participated in a land blessing ceremony with members of the Osage Nation, which took place on a hilltop near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. According to the official Killers of the Flower Moon press notes, Oscage Chief Standing Bear said at the land blessing, “The respect that Mr. Scorsese and his team have displayed toward us is more than we hoped for. Such sensitivity is welcome and is a continuation of the respect [book author] David Grann showed us.”

The production visited the actual locations where the events of the film had taken place, and, in some cases, actually filmed there. Like, for example, the doctor’s office where Ernest brings his wife for her insulin injections. In an interview for the press notes, cinematographer and frequent Scorsese collaborator Rodrigo Prieto explained how they pulled that off. “It was a tricky location because it’s on a high second floor and we had some rainy conditions on the day we were shooting,” Prieto said. “The windows looked out onto a street that had a lot of modern buildings on it, so we hung sheers and tried to blow out the windows with lighting so we wouldn’t see the modern buildings outside. Even though we might’ve found an easier location to do that, it was, I think, important for the actors and for all of us, really, to be in the actual place. It was a very special feeling to be shooting in those actual spots. That comes through in the film, that energy of being right there in the streets of Pawhuska and of Fairfax. Feeling like you’re actually in 1920s Oklahoma, with everybody dressed in period costumes and all that, was quite exciting.”

That said, even though the real Mollie Burkhart was from Fairfax Oklahoma, the town has changed quite a bit since the 1920s. For that reason, a lot of the town scenes were shot in Pawhuska, roughly 30 miles away from Fairfax. Production designer Jack Fisk restored some of the Pawhuska two-story buildings to recreate the bustling Kihekah Avenue in downtown Fairfax that you see in the film. The production team also recreated the old Fairfax train station, including 1,200 feet of track and a real locomotive, on a plot of land owned by the Osage in Pawhuska.

The grand home of William Hale was also constructed by the production, on a ranch site in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. A replica of the house where Mollie lived with her mother, Lizzie, was built on ranch land just outside of Pawhuska. “I looked at the placement of Lizzie’s house in Gray Horse, Oklahoma, the way it was situated,” Fisk said in an interview for the press notes. “There was a stream by it and then a cemetery up to the right. The land I found had a beautiful stream like that and we put the house in a similar position to where the house really sat in Gray Horse. We built a barn, a roundhouse and a cemetery with about 75 or 100 tombstones out there fashioned after the original cemetery.”