SCREEN | John Magaro Drives Across Nebraska to 'Omaha'

"I think we're moving."

Greenwich Entertainment / Vortex Media

Accomplished character actor John Magaro stars as a struggling single father in Utah filmmaker Cole Webley's Midwest family road trip indie drama, Omaha, also his directorial debut. It's a slow but patient indie drama scripted by Robert Machoian that revolves around two children (Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis) and their perspectives on what might really be going on in their family unit.

Magaro's father character wakes up his kids at the crack of dawn and loads them into his barely functioning station wagon with only their essential possessions before a sheriff posts an eviction notice on their door, and they head off towards the unknown. Where exactly they are going, aside from their titular Nebraskan destination, and what lies ahead for this down-on-their-luck family is unclear. However, they make the best of it by making pit stops, seeing tourist attractions and scarfing down road burgers.

Webley's first film makes for a devastating trip into parental desperation. Its moments of genuine sweetness and daily parenthood and adult responsibilities only further heighten the unknown tension that lies ahead. Omaha tells a simple but effective portrait of fatherhood in middle America that lightly weaves in topical everyday issues of working-class inequality and unaffordability for regular families. It offers no answers or big ideas but dramatizes the struggle of caring for children deftly.

Omaha screens at the VIFF Centre starting May 8th.


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