The beauty of the American West is indisputable, but it is as harsh as it is awe-inspiring. In his first feature A Love Song, director Max Walker-Silverman used the mountains of Colorado as a backdrop for the intimate reunion between two former friends, recently widowed and seeing each other for the first time in decades. It’s a story of quiet heartbreak, but the rocky, mountainous terrain that surrounds them makes it feel like something grander.

In Rebuilding, Walker-Silverman is once again dealing in intimate relationships, this time between the residents of a small Colorado community affected by a wildfire after it destroys a tiny enclave in the mountains above the town proper. After much of January saw Los Angeles face devastating wildfires, Rebuilding is premiering at a pivotal moment for the film industry and the city it calls home.

Rebuilding Is Timely & Hopeful

Timing Doesn’t Make The Movie, Though – It’s Just Plain Good

Finding a way forward after tragedy is essentially what Rebuilding is about: the film focuses on Josh O’Connor’s Dusty, a rancher who loses his home in a wildfire after it destroys the 200 acres his family has owned for generations. This home was all that Dustry had – though we don’t see him before the fire, it’s implied that the ranch was his whole life.

He’s not the only one who lost something, though. When he is put up in a FEMA outpost of a scattered grouping of mobile homes, he meets others who were affected by the fires, including an elderly couple, a kind recluse, and a single mother (Kali Reis). Their temporary housing sits in the middle of vast brushland with mountains in the distance reaching towards the sky.

In town, Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) lives with their daughter Callie Rose (Lilly LaTorre) and her mother Bess (Amy Madigan). With the land he’s called home his entire life now destroyed, Dusty is unmoored, searching for purpose in a barren landscape that seems indifferent to the people who call it home.

He contemplates moving to Montana to work on his cousin’s land, but Ruby and Bess point out how that would impact Callie Rose, who clearly looks up to her father even as she acts as if she doesn’t really need him. Because Dusty lost his home, his desire to pack up and leave to look for community elsewhere becomes almost overwhelming.

What he doesn’t expect is to find that community in the middle of nowhere. It may sound like there’s a lot going on here – and there is – but Rebuilding takes a patient, contemplative approach to its story, letting us discover the ways community organically forms around loss and tragedy without overwhelming you with an overbearing sadness. There is always hope.

O’Connor does wonders in an understated role – he’s brooding but not in a way that allows darkness to consume his performance. Instead, there’s a constant undercurrent of optimism, especially when he’s with his daughter. O’Connor’s performance is more in line with his turns in La Chimera or God’s Own Country than it is with his cocky scumbag from last year’s Challengers, and it proves further that he has an incredible range.

The supporting cast is also quite effective. Fahy, who was superb in The White Lotus season 2, gets to do something much more subtle here, while Reis draws from her steely True Detective character while finding a softness that suits her. All of this is supported by Walker-Silverman’s affectionate eye for that landscape that dwarfs these characters.

He is from the area in Colorado where the film is set and his love for the land and the people is apparent. Home can be an intangible concept, but for those in Rebuilding, the land they live on gives them a sense of purpose that is forced to shift when they become displaced.

Rebuilding does not deal in overt drama, instead choosing to capture life as it is. Tragedy happens, but people must carry on, brace themselves for the next tragedy, and allow the light in between all that, too. A shared dinner around a makeshift fire, a flower garden growing in used tires, a tiny sprout growing underneath a burned tree. There is light everywhere.

O’Connor, too, does not lean into showy drama, though there is one powerful moment where Dusty lets his grief – for his splintered family, for his home – come to the surface. Ultimately, Rebuilding chooses a gentle, deliberate approach to its story, making it all the more powerful in its observations on what it means to find a home and community in places and ways you’d least expect.

Rebuilding premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 26.