Release Date: April 24, 2026 (New York limited; national rollout May 8, 2026). World premiere: January 23, 2025 — Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Dramatic Competition
Runtime: 1 hr 33 min (83 minutes)
Rated: PG-13 – thematic material
Production Companies: Sanctuary Content, Kaleidoscope Pictures, Monarch Content
Producers: Preston Lee, John Foss, Scott James
Cinematography: Paul Meyers
Editing: Jai Shukla
Music/Composer: Christopher Bear (formerly of Grizzly Bear)
Omaha (2026)
Director: Cole Webley
Writer: Robert Machoian
Cast: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam, Christina Cooper, Emma Keifer
Have you ever borne witness to the trope of spelling out the word “veterinarian” in front of a dog in order to prevent them from spazzing out beforehand? Up and coming director Cole Webley is able to capture that essence in his feature debut, Omaha, where he explores a family living amongst the 2008 financial crisis and housing collapse. He spells out what adults do in front of their kids — foreclosure, abandonment, desperation — and unpacks what the kids pick up on anyway.
A topic that is not only more relevant than ever today with the current economy, but one that is deeply personal to a large demographic, as they quite literally lived through it — and in many ways, are living through something eerily similar again. They experienced the hardships firsthand and might have even lost their livelihoods in the process of it all. Though Webley is able to bypass all that weight through the perspective he chooses to approach this narrative from, and of course, through his filmmaking style and choices.
Leading our film, whose name is not known past “Dad,” is John Magaro, waking his kids up at the crack of dawn with a collision of urgency and compassion. His daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and son Charlie (Wyatt Solis) are young and naive, though not lacking in brains. As we constantly get our story told through the eyes of Ella, we are at times confused right alongside her, while in others, devastatingly understanding of what her father might be doing in her and her brother’s best interest — even if it may not seem like it in the moment.
Magaro himself commands nearly every scene he inhabits — which is practically all of them — with perfectly timed silence, weighted looks, and body language that conveys more than most actors could ever manage with a full page of dialogue. While much of the emotional load being carried can be attributed to Wright as Ella, it is her father who counterbalances much of what she expresses so openly, remaining nonchalant on the surface even as it becomes increasingly evident that he is anything but, given the circumstances. It speaks to something universal about parenthood: how much parents have to conceal from their little ones, absorbing their own devastation quietly, if only to spare their children some emotional distress a little while longer.
Similar to many films I have seen lately, Omaha leans heavily on natural sights, lights, and sounds when showcasing the environment we are immersed in during the unexpected road trip these children are taken on. Leaving their house behind, and alongside their golden retriever Rex, we’re off — on a trip whose destination we are left in the dark about, right alongside the kids.
The camera work and cinematography by Paul Meyers is exceptional, particularly in regard to a film of this nature and pace — think yesterday’s reviewed feature Blue Heron or Annie Baker’s Janet Planet. As we road trip to who knows where, we experience various vibrant and lived-in scenes at the hands of their father. Kites being flown as the kids run alongside Rex across the vast Utah salt flats. The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, where the family observes animals together with the rare, fleeting leisure of just being a family. These are the moments Webley frames with a quiet, almost aching beauty — as if he knows, and we slowly begin to know, that they are numbered.
But Webley also dissects and explores the moments of travesty and devastation with equal care. Ella witnesses her father quietly remove items from their grocery order at checkout because he doesn’t have enough money to cover it all — making sure the kids keep theirs. It is a small, wordless scene, but it lands like a gut punch. Much of what works in this film lives in those conflicted interactions between the father and his kids. From the perspective of someone like Charlie, optimism and hope sit comfortably at the top of your mind at that age. Meanwhile, Ella — just a few years older — wants to stay positive, but is old enough to be suspicious, to notice the subtle shifts in the air around her, and it is that awareness that is maturing and aging her faster than any child ever should have to endure.
Most audiences are bound to connect with the relationship the three share with one another, even in the toughest and most heartbreaking of moments. But with Ella as our constant reference point, Webley shines in holding our collective anxiety in limbo — as we, much like she is, are constantly trying to piece together where the cracks in this family’s foundation truly run.
When it all comes down to it, Omaha is presented early on as a family road trip film. The tension, however, and the thing that makes it so interesting, is how Webley builds the world around us in the process. It is a world grounded entirely in reality, rooted in context and circumstance that makes it easy — sometimes uncomfortably easy — to connect with. It holds us in quiet anticipation, never quite tipping its hand, even as the dread gathers at the edges of every frame.
The visuals are astounding. The acting between our little family unit is so authentic that it becomes simultaneously charming and heartbreaking. The blocking, the body language, and the unspoken looks exchanged between the three do far more to relay the emotional landscape of this family than any amount of written dialogue ever could. Webley understands, as does Machoian’s restrained screenplay, that silence is its own kind of language — and this family speaks it fluently.
Omaha is a film that builds steadily and deliberately toward an ending that seeps directly into the wounds the real world was enduring at the time, and yet lands with a devastation that feels entirely of this moment too. It is a quiet film, but not a small one. And in the same way that Ella gradually, painfully begins to read between the lines of her father’s behavior throughout their journey, so too does the audience — until the word is finally, heartbreakingly spelled out.