Director – Max Walker-Silverman – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 96m
****
A divorced man whose home has been destroyed by a forest fire begins to reconnect with his pre-teenage daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th
This opens with an image of red hot embers rising and falling a black night sky. A couple of brief, opening, expository shots is all we are shown of the tragedy, but it’s enough: much of the remainder of the narrative takes place against a backdrop of leafless, tall, burned trees, an area of likely great former beauty now reduced to desolation. This is not the cinema of big budget disaster scenarios with no-holds barred pyrotechnic effects: it’s something altogether much lower key and quieter, an exploration of the effect of natural disasters on the lives of those people who survive them.
The fire has destroyed the 20 acres of property on the edge of the forest where Dusty (Josh O’Connor from The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus, 2025; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2017; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) lives, an area of outstanding natural beauty. He sells off his surviving livestock at an auction, then calls in on his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy from The White Lotus, TV series, 2022) who lives in the nearby town with their pre-teen daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre) and his mother-in-law Bess (Amy Madigan from Weapons, Zach Cregger, 2025; Pollock, Ed Harris, 2000; Field of Dreams, Phil Alden Robinson, 1989).… Read the rest