REBUILDING***

Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman's REBUILDING is set in the American West, amidst a community whose houses and land have been destroyed by wildfire.  They now find themselves living in FEMA trailers, attempting to rebuild their lives. There's a well-meaning but ultimately useless bureaucrat who needs them to fill out the right paperwork and submit it online - absurd when they don't have computers or wifi.  And a loan officer who delicately informs our protagonist that it will be years before his farm will be productive again.

The film is centred around Dusty - a farmer who has inherited a farm that has been worked by generations of his family. It feels as though Dusty has a romantic sentimental approach to making a living, something his ex-wife calls him out for.  As the film opens, he has to take care of his daughter Callie Rose after a long hiatus, and a lot of the gentle joy of the film is seeing them try to re-establish a relationship, and for both to come to appreciate the ramshackle group of people they are living with.  It's a film about refound actual family, and newly adopted found family.  

The film is not without its longeuers in its central chapters, but I found myself really rooting for the characters and moved by the film's resolution.  I appreciated Josh O'Connor's central performance, eschewing the theatrics of an exxagerated accent, and allowing his subtle facial reactions to do the talking.  I also liked Meghann Fahy as his ex-wife. It was also to a pleasure to see True Detective's Kali Reiss back on screen.

REBUILDING is rated PG and has a running time of 96 minutes. It played Sundance 2025 and opened in t the USA in November.  It will open in the UK in April 2026.