Omaha (film)

A father takes his two children, Ella and Charlie, on a road trip across the United States after their home is foreclosed.^[4][5]

• John Magaro as Dad
• Molly Belle Wright as Ella
• Wyatt Solis as Charlie
• Talia Balsam as Edie
• Christina Cooper as Lisette

Omaha screenwriter Robert Machoian, a Brigham Young University professor of photography, first conceived the idea for the script in 2008. He submitted it to a Sundance Film Festival screenwriter's lab in 2013, but it was rejected. Machoian later received his first Sundance feature in 2020 with a different film, The Killing of Two Lovers, which he wrote and directed.^[4]

Cole Webley made his feature directorial debut with the film. He became involved with the project after he met Machoian at Sundance and read the screenplay.^[4]

Production formally began in 2022 upon the partnership between Machoian and Webley. Its filming schedule included 20 days in Utah, where scenes were shot in historic mining towns and the state's salt flats.^[4]

Omaha made its world premiere on January 23, 2025, as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Feature Competition category.^[6] In April 2025, Greenwich Entertainment acquired North American distribution rights to the film.^[7] It is scheduled to be released in the United States on April 24, 2026.^[8]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of 44 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A melancholy journey leading to a mysterious destination, Omaha rewards patience with its cumulative emotional wallop and John Magaro's quietly haunting performance."^[9] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[10]