Director: Cole Webley
Writer: Robert Machoian
Stars: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis
Synopsis: After a family tragedy, siblings Ella and Charlie are woken up by their dad and taken on a cross-country journey, experiencing a new world. As their adventure unfolds, Ella begins to understand that things might not be what they seem.
When Cole Webley’s Omaha begins, we see nothing but a shell of a home. Based strictly on visual context cues, all we can fathom is that something in this house has gone terribly wrong. But when we first meet the primarily nameless Dad (John Magaro, in a gut-wrenching, astonishing performance), Ella (Molly Belle Wright), and Charlie (Wyatt Solis), it’s clear that things weren’t always this way. With a tender lens, Webley eases us into the midst of such turmoil. Dad wakes up his two children and gets them into a beaten-down car, begging them to cooperate and to gather the items they most cherish. Shot beautifully by cinematographer Paul Meyers in his first feature, so much of this film is lensed with obstacles in the way. This is especially telling in the introduction. We peer around the edge of doorways alongside Ella to see Dad as he seems to be holding back tears. We look beyond staircases we can barely see over and through dusty car windows seeing Dad speak to a sheriff. So much of Omaha feels, both visually and thematically, like a story we shouldn’t have access to. But the fact that we do makes it all the more special. It also makes it all the more heartbreaking.
Ohama is a film pretty much exclusively made up of deeply intimate moments. The approach to these events is more often than not captured through the eyes of the children, Ella and Charlie. Constantly utilizing a handheld camera whenever outside of the car, the locations and events of the film take on a larger-than-life-quality. We’re always pulled through life by the whims of fate and circumstance. But as children, this feeling is compounded through the lives of our parents. Whatever path they’re on, for better and for worse, is the path the children are often relegated to. So Ella and Charlie merely follow along on this journey with an unknown destination. Through the children, Webley often exudes a sense of wonder. The world just looks so vast and magical before their eyes as they run across salt flats flying a kite. They could seemingly remain there forever, frozen in pure bliss unbeknownst of what tomorrow will bring. All the while, Magaro remains off in the distance, carrying the weight of the world in his face.
To state it plainly, Omaha doesn’t work without the three outstanding performances it revolves around. Starting with Magaro, so much is captured in his face. The pain, despite the film only revealing momentary glimpses into it, radiates off his features. Robert Machoian’s excellently sparse script utilizes the lack of concrete information as a feature rather than a bug. Whatever Dad is going through, he is trying to keep his children free from that emotional weight. But he’s not hiding it nearly as well as he would like to. And thus, the brilliance of Omaha reveals itself in this veiled blatancy. The film subtly shows its hand early on. But from there, Webley forces his audience to hope against hope that we’re wrong. Magaro plays a man who is profoundly lost, and his children are unfortunately being caught up in this storm. To them, this is a confusing experience, peppered with moments of joy. The balancing act of such beauty and pain lies in the hands of these unbelievable child performances from Belle Wright and Solis.
Despite the unknown circumstances around which this film revolves, Dad and his children are a clear unit. So much of the film is full of inside jokes and adorably childish improvised questions. The common routines they share with one another have become muscle memory. Belle Wright is exceptional as Ella. As she tries to slowly piece together context clues from the behavior of her father, you can almost see her internally reckoning with what learning the results will mean for her childhood. Yet there’s still an expression of youthful hope across her face as she tries to entertain herself and her brother amidst the packed car. Next to Solis as Charlie, the two provide a genuine and necessary chemistry as brother and sister. Of course they bicker. And of course, they hide a depth of thoughts within their silent stares out the window. When they are creating imaginative stories in a play place or dancing along the side of the road, you’d never believe these two weren’t genuinely related. Solis, playing the younger of the two, provides such a humorous tone to the impending worry and curiosity of what might be in store for this family. The two have different approaches to brushing against the actions of their father, yet they both share the commonality of wanting to remain joyous and hopeful amidst uncertainty.
All the while through watching Omaha, the devastating reality is this: many of these moments we’re made privy to are beautiful. If this was a standard road-trip film, it would primarily be an occasion beyond joyousness. These are memories that harken us back to moments in childhood that capture the beautiful simplicities of life. And yet, where Webley and Machoian take this film is tainted with uncertain worry. In the end, Omaha is a great film because of its ability to capture both aspects of this journey. There is a lot of beauty to be found throughout its short runtime. But there’s also such pain coursing through the very foundation of its genesis as a film. By the time Omaha ends, we’re forced to reckon with whether or not certain actions can ever be forgiven. Perhaps there’s a shred of understanding or sympathy to be found in the context of which this film is set, but it’s equally damning towards a society that has fundamentally failed the people within it.
Omaha is celebrating its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category.
