Working in his native Colorado, as he did in his memorable debut feature, A Love Song, Max Walker-Silverman again conjures a potent visual language from the landscape in Rebuilding. And, again, the writer-director places a halting love story at the center of his film. This time, though, the rural vista is scarred by a devastating wildfire, and it isn’t sweethearts separated by time who become reacquainted but a father and his young daughter, separated by divorce.

That father is an unmoored cowboy named Dusty, trying to figure out what comes next after the flames have destroyed his ranch, the place that defines him. The wrenching heart of this quiet drama, he’s played with eloquent understatement by Josh O’Connor, delivering the latest in a remarkable string of performances, and one that’s matched beat for poignant beat by the other members of the central cast.

Notwithstanding the eerie timeliness of the movie, arriving as Los Angeles is reeling from disastrous conflagrations, this is a work whose riches transcend topicality. With his understanding of and affection for the hardy inhabitants of the mountainous American West, Walker-Silverman brings a new and tender radiance to the idea of regional filmmaking, along with an awareness of outworn stereotypes. Upending clichés about rugged individualism, Rebuilding looks toward a communal vision of courageousness and reinvention, a way to move forward without negating the past — especially when the remnants of that past have been reduced to ash.

Reteaming with cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, Walker-Silverman wields an elegant shorthand, beginning with the ominous beauty of embers against a night sky. Cutting from that opening image to a ghostly scorched forest of leafless trees, Rebuilding delves straight into Dusty’s limbo, beginning with the auction of the cattle his charred land can no longer sustain. The editing, by Jane Rizzo and Ramzi Bashour, is finely attuned to the straightforward, crystalline lensing and the story’s often wordless poignancy. And the acoustic score by Jake Xerxes Fussell and James Elkington is in sync with the interplay of dialogue and loaded silences, and well abetted by the occasional strains of country on the radio of Dusty’s truck. (A John Prine tune caps things off in the perfect key.)

Having kicked around here and there for a couple of months after the fire, Dusty is the last arrival at a mini-village of FEMA trailers arranged on a remote scrap of land. Alone in the narrow interior of his new home with the few boxes that hold his remaining earthly possessions, he jumps in his truck to escape the aching silence, arriving at a cheery clapboard house in town. Its kid-friendly yard clutter and warm interior (outstanding work by production designer Juliana Barreto Barreto) are an antidote to the sudden, awful emptiness of Dusty’s days. This is the home of his former mother-in-law, Bess (Any Madigan), and it’s where his ex, Ruby (Meghann Fahy), is raising their 9-year-old daughter, Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre).

Ruby is surprised to see him, but doesn’t waste the opportunity to enlist him in some parenting. Without spelling it out in conversation, this narrative sequence makes clear, in Ruby’s almost angry decisiveness, Callie-Rose’s shyness bordering on detachment, and Dusty’s awkward hesitation, that he hasn’t been a steady part of his little girl’s life for a while. LaTorre, who starred opposite Sarah Snook in Run Rabbit Run, is captivating, conveying her character’s perceptiveness as well as the observational knack she’s inherited from her mother. “Mom says you didn’t apply yourself,” she informs her dad, who takes the judgment good-naturedly even as he feels the sting. Sometimes, clearly, his daughter’s intelligence intimidates him.

For Callie-Rose, whose guardedness soon gives way to infatuation, there’s an unmistakable gift in her father’s calamity: He’s released from the chores that claimed all his waking hours. The cowboy stuff that once put him at a distance is now a source of fascination and a way of connecting. In an especially lovely scene, he teaches her to saddle his horse, being housed for now by a fellow rancher (Dwight Mondragon). Dusty’s trailer-park life is no less an adventure for his daughter. She makes a new friend (Zeilyanna Martinez), a tween girl whose father died in the wildfire, and together they plant a firmament of glow-in-the-dark stars on the drab walls of Dusty’s trailer, interrupting his despair with magic.

Callie-Rose helps to draw her father into this new community, a place he initially regards as a mere way station, a blip on the road back to the life he’s always known. But that road is not as direct as he envisions it. A man of few words, Dusty is most animated when talking about rebuilding the ranch that has been in his family for four generations. You can see his dream of that yearned-for return shatter, and his soul sink, as he takes in the crushing advice of a loan officer (Jefferson Mays) at the local bank.

The people Dusty at first views as “not real neighbors anyway” quickly become a family of sorts, sharing meals and memories of the things they lost in the fire. With the exception of Mali, a heroically even-keeled widow played by Kali Reis, of True Detective, the roles of Dusty’s fellow survivors are handled by first-time screen actors, including the accomplished musician Binky Griptite. Most of them have a few moments of character-sketch screen time, but, more to Walker-Silverman’s point, they stand collectively in calm, sturdy rebuke to the notion, long endorsed by Hollywood, of a homogenous rural America. (Another Sundance selection this year, the South Dakota-set East of Wall, offers its own cliché-busting picture of the West.)

Dusty’s new neighbors include a lesbian couple (Nancy Morlan and Kathy Rose), a biracial couple (Biptite and Jeanine London), an affable plumber (David Bright) and a man of the woods (Christopher Young) who maintains a friendly distance. Mainly they’re emblems, here not to complicate the story but to provide a composite portrait of kindness and resilience. (The most glaringly underdeveloped role in the drama belongs to Ruby’s partner, Robbie, an amenable guitar-strumming fellow played by Sam Engbring.)

In the presence of his fellow FEMA tenants, Dusty is at first like a forlorn big kid, slouching slightly as if to minimize his towering frame, thrusting his normally hardworking, newly idle hands into his jeans pockets, and, yes, occasionally helping himself to one of his daughter’s juice boxes. But beneath the lost, juvenile aura are questions of legacy and a keen awareness of the life he’s inherited — not an easy one, as the dates on his parents’ headstones in the family plot attest.

The matter of rootedness is addressed head-on when Callie-Rose goes to work on a family tree, presumably for school. As the girl, her parents and grandmother sit around a table filled with names and photographs, what might have been merely literal in lesser hands unfurls with a powerful current of love beneath its minimal dialogue.

Fahy, infusing her atypical role with an earthy grace, delivers a couple of the movie’s most affecting passages, the language’s simplicity matched by the emotions’ enormity. And Madigan’s modest directness lays a foundation for the drama in a way that’s so masterful in its subtlety, you’d be tempted to call it sleight of hand.

On the face of it, Dusty is a role that might seem a stretch even for shapeshifter O’Connor, who in a few short years has traveled a path of electrifying versatility, beginning with God’s Own Country and his star-making turn on The Crown, and on through such diverse terrain as Mothering Sunday, La Chimera and Challengers. But the British actor is compelling from first moment to last, fully inhabiting the character’s pain and confusion as well as his essential optimism.

Everyone in Rebuilding is sincere, honest and caring, and nothing is overplayed — including the bashful love that blossoms between Dusty and Callie-Rose and is the engine of the story. As this exceptionally quiet movie unfolds, there are moments when you might wish for more friction, more heat, like the healthy dashes of hot sauce with which Madigan’s character doses the scrambled eggs she serves her granddaughter. But Walker-Silverman is a filmmaker who doesn’t hew to formulaic arcs, and it would be a mistake to interpret quietness as tranquility or ease. Something more complex and rewarding than surface tension is at play here, and it builds to a conclusion of breathtaking openheartedness. Sometimes a blip on the road is magic in disguise, the root of a dazzling new constellation.

1 of 5 | Stephan James stars in “Ricky,” which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute

The film parses out information about what led to Ricky’s arrest. Characters reference past events vaguely because they are all familiar with it, as opposed to pointed exposition for the audience.

This not only keeps the audience curious to find out more about the Smith family, but makes the drama more natural. Scenes don’t feel constructed just for a movie.

For Ricky, the demands on parolees, though justified, are so high they create a precarious situation that could collapse at any time. He needs to keep appointments with his parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph), find a regular job, attend parolee support meetings, and avoid any felons or drugs, which present themselves around every corner.

Ricky can’t do this alone. He doesn’t have a driver’s license yet and relies on his brother, James (Maliq Johnson) for rides.

It only takes one time for his brother to forget, or love interest Cheryl (Andrene Ward-Hammond) to escalate into a volatile scenario, and Ricky has inadvertently violated his parole.

In many ways, Ricky is still emotionally 15. He’s trying to cope with having missed out on many formative socializing years.

He might take a joke from James personally. He might trigger Cheryl and provoke an even more volatile fight.

The film continues to share more about the Smith family, the neighborhood and even the parole officer late into the film. In the script co-written by director Rashad Frett and Lin Que Ayoung, these are characters with history that only becomes clear when relevant to the current situation.

Ricky’s progress may feel like he takes one step forward and two steps back. However, there is gradual headway.

It takes patience and compassion, powerful emotions with which any piece of art can deal. Ricky embodies that without shying away from the harsh realities of the situation.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.

Movies about irresponsible parenting in the great outdoors have become something of an arthouse subgenre over the past decade. Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, India Donaldson’s Good One and Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire all feature children coming of age in the wilderness as their fathers mess up in one way or another. If there’s perhaps one takeaway from all of these films, it’s to be on guard the next time your dad asks you to go on a long hike or camping trip.

Unfortunately, such a warning was never issued to Roy (Woody Norman), the 13-year-old protagonist of French writer-director Vladimir de Fontenay’s latest feature, Sukkwan Island. Embarking with his father, Tom (Swann Arlaud), on an extended séjour to an isolated cabin somewhere in the Norwegian fjords, Roy soon finds himself facing various life or death scenarios while Tom gradually flies off the handle.

Adapted from David Vann’s 2010 novel, which won several awards in France, the film is a rugged two-hander about a son getting to know his estranged father while they attempt to survive through the long and relentless Nordic winter. As the two are confronted by snowstorms, hungry bears and other external threats, it becomes increasingly clear that the real threat is Tom, a troubled man broken by divorce and seeking to build a bond with a boy he doesn’t ever bother to understand.

Like De Fontenay’s debut feature Mobile Homes, which followed an impoverished family scraping by in upstate New York, Sukkwan Island has a powerful immersive quality that makes up for some of its dramatic shortcomings, especially dialogue that can feel either stilted or too on-the-nose.

Shot with stylized naturalism by Amine Berrada (Banel & Adama), the film plunges us into a breathtaking northern landscape that’s virtually untouched by man. Tom and Roy spend a lot of time trudging through heaping piles of snow or jumping into a lake that looks abominably cold. When they’re not doing other outdoor activities like cutting wood or hunting elk, they’re stuck together in an old cabin that could use some major repairs, including a new roof.

The two are doing this at the urging of Tom, a Frenchman who split with Roy’s mother (Tuppence Middleton) and hasn’t been in the picture for some time. He’s hoping the trip will become a rite of passage through which Roy learns both survival instincts and to appreciate the simple beauties of nature. At least for a few days or weeks, that seems to be the case. But then Roy begins to realize his father is selfish, unhinged and, to cite the above-listed movies, totally irresponsible — to the point that he puts them both in serious danger.

Working under what were clearly harsh conditions, De Fontenay achieves a real level of intimacy with his two performers, whose characters are constantly wavering between moments of affection and resentment. Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall) portrays Tom as a lost soul with good intentions but no idea how to behave like a proper parent. And the excellent Norman (who starred alongside Joaquin Phoenix in C’mon C’mon) reveals how much Roy wants to love and respect his dad, all the while remaining uneasy around him.

Things inevitably come to a head as the winter grows darker and more hostile, forcing Roy and Tom to resort to extremes so they can survive — especially after their two-way radio is destroyed by the latter, who wants to cut them off entirely from civilization. By that point, it becomes difficult to believe that Tom could be so reckless as to risk their lives, making us wonder if he’s gone completely out of his mind. De Fontenay alludes to this earlier when Roy discovers his dad’s stash of anxiety meds, but it’s otherwise hard to imagine the man would take things so far just to prove that he has terrific survival skills.

Alas, the director tosses in a major, not-worth-spoiling twist at the very last minute to explain all the craziness we’ve been witnessing. The plot reversal does manage to justify how things got far so out of hand, though it also comes across as a major cop-out — so much so that several title cards are inserted at the end to make the finale go down more smoothly.

These kinds of twists, whether in the famous dream season of Dallas or nearly every movie made by M. Night Shyamalan, are, at their best, a chance for the viewer to rethink what they’ve been watching, to see the drama in a new light. In some ways De Fontenay achieves this, but in others he undermines his own film. That doesn’t necessarily take away from the better aspects of Sukkwan Island, especially the lived-in performances and you-are-there quality of the direction. But it makes for shaky ground to stand on, with the risk that everything Roy and Tom just went through ultimately loses its staying power.