1 week ago
16
While Sundance 2026 is already in our rearview, some of the best films of the previous year’s festival are just now getting ready to come out for wider audiences. That includes Cole Webley’s heartbreaking John Magaro-starrer “Omaha,” which premiered in competition at last year’s festival and will hit theaters this spring.
Per its official logline, it is “set against the backdrop of the 2008 economic crisis, [and] follows a struggling father (Magaro) who sets out with his two children, Ella and Charlie, on a journey across the American West. What begins as a seemingly spontaneous trip gradually reveals deeper emotional stakes, as his daughter Ella begins to sense that her father may be carrying a more complicated truth.”
As I wrote in my own Sundance review of the film, “For a good portion of Cole Webley’s feature directorial debut, ‘Omaha,‘ we remain as in the dark about what’s happening as the pair of plucky kid stars (Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis) who serve as two members of the tight-knit family trio at its center. That’s a feature, not a bug, as Robert Machoian’s screenplay may be steady in doling out information and clever in what it obscures, but those choices put the audience on even keel with the heart of this heartbreaking family drama.”
The film‘s performances truly recommend it, and I also noted that “Magaro’s performance … teeters between moments of profound grief and a hard-won desire to show his kids a good time. As they slip through roadside gas stations, he pauses for fast food, ice cream, kite-flying, and more, all set against the starkly beautiful American West. … While Magaro’s performance anchors the film, strong turns from both Wright and Solis give added depth. So too does Webley and [screenwriter Robert] Machoian’s obvious interest in their young characters’ perspectives and experience; ‘Omaha’ is often not just seen, but felt through their eyes.”
At Sundance, Webley told IndieWire about the impact he was already seeing at the film’s early screenings. The night before Webley and his cast joined the IndieWire studio for a chat, he said a man approached him and “just couldn’t stop talking about how he wanted to go home and tell his dad, who raised him and his two siblings as a solo dad, about this movie. He was so impacted by it. … I get that this movie will not be for every human out there, but … the thing that’s right under the surface for us is how much we love our families. And that is what is resonating.”
That wasn’t just an isolated incident. After the film’s Sundance debut, it played at several other festivals around the globe, where it picked up numerous accolades and admirers.
Those accolades include: a best film (first features) win at the Jakarta World Cinema festival, a jury prize from the Deauville American Film Festival, an audience award at Nashville, grand jury and best feature win at DIFF, the Jordan Ressler First Feature Award at Miami, and a raft of wins at the Richmond International Film Festival (including a grand jury prize for best feature, best director for Webley, best actor for Magaro, best acting, and Rising Star awards for both Solis and Wright).
Greenwich Entertainment will release the film in New York on Friday, April 24, and in theaters nationwide this May. Check out the first full trailer for “Omaha” below.
English (US) ·