Max Walker-Silverman couldn’t have known just how timely his latest film “Rebuilding” would be when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year, though he always aims for something timeless. His grandmother’s house had burned down in a wildfire in 2020 and as he watched her and others in the area start to pick up the pieces, suddenly having a reason to engage when the acres between them could feel insurmountable, he was led to put pen to paper for a follow-up to his disarming debut feature “A Love Song.” After being prevented from presenting that film in person in Park City when the festival went online due to COVID in 2022, there was even more emotion in the room than he could imagine when he played to an audience that surely knew of someone who only weeks earlier had lost their home in the conflagrations that engulfed Southern California in early 2025 if it hadn’t been themselves personally, yet Walker-Silverman has a way of lifting weight rather than having it bear down and it would seem that everyone walked out of the room a little lighter and more hopeful from what they could experience together.
Without ever feeling forced or cloying, Walker-Silverman has a rare ability to see the goodness in people, a constant fount for optimism even as it’s hard for Dusty (Josh O’Connor), the farmer at the center of “Rebuilding” who lost the ranch that had been in his family for generations, to see much at all in the charred remains of where he lives and works. Told that the land is a total loss when it’ll take decades for the soil to be conducive to crops again and running at tight margins to begin with, he doesn’t have the savings to immediately reconstruct what was anyway, he has to consider moving north although that would mean leaving his young daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre) to live with her mother Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and grandmother Bess (Amy Madigan), which isn’t a terrible prospect as far as Callie-Rose’s care is concerned when despite their divorce he and Ruby remain on good terms, but it’ll bring a host of heartache.
It’s never overemphasized, but when Dusty has already been faced with having his life fall apart when things didn’t work out with his childhood sweetheart, the physical destruction of the home they once shared together may have been just as devastating, yet slightly easier to accept when he’s become accustomed to letting go of the life he once had and as he settles into a camper van amongst a group of others who have lost everything, including Mila (“Catch the Fair One”’s Kali Reis), there is strength in numbers when at least they don’t have to go through this grieving process alone. Whereas Walker-Silverman charmed in his first film with both a tender romance at its core and characters whose quirks were accentuated with cunning camerawork, “Rebuilding” allows beauty to emerge naturally as self-confidence begins to grow organically for the survivors of the fire as the grass starting to sprout up beneath their feet and the film is anchored by delicate performances from O’Connor and a lovely ensemble to offer the warmest of embraces.
During a recent stop at AFI Fest in Los Angeles ahead of the film’s theatrical release this week, Walker-Silverman graciously took the time to talk about the personal roots of “Rebuilding” and instilling a community spirit throughout the production by recruiting locally for both the film’s cast and crew, as well as taking what the weather gives you and working with an actor with as much curiosity as O’Connor.
How did this come about? From what I understand, it started from a personal place.
It’s a fable for sure, and certainly a work of fiction, but drawn from all sorts of things that are real. The family element was very important to me in the movie [because] I wanted to make a tribute to a family like my own, on that’s a bit unconventional and had its real problems, but constantly driven by love and raised the children well in large part through the sprawling village version of an upbringing rather than despite it. Then at a more literal level, the fire was something we went through as a family, so there’s a lot of reality in that but it’s all cobbled together as something like a folktale.
Not to suggest that this film doesn’t have style, but this film is far more naturalistic in its approach than “A Love Song.” Was it interesting to work more in that register?
It seemed more appropriate for the story somehow, a less overt stylization. Formally, you always want something new or different or something that’s a challenge and I was curious what it would be like to make something without the trick of style, which can be really lovely and charming — and I still like and am proud of [“A Love Song”] — but also can be something to hide behind. That style was really useful when you’re dealing with a story with such minimal drama. So then it doubles the challenge of can you make something compelling, interesting and moving without a lot of drama, but also without some of that style? That’s for the audience to decide, but I did appreciate the challenge of it.
You pull it off. And there are some great grace notes in this film where you see the filmmaker behind “A Love Song,” like at the intersection around the library where everyone is trying to get wi-fi.
Yeah, I did find that style thing was useful in establishing a certain otherness of the world. I don’t necessarily want people to be watching these films looking for reality. I want it to be a universe that can play a little bit by its own rules and ultimately have a little more beauty and a little more hope than perhaps the real world allows us, but just tried to go about it in a slightly different way. It still feels like a little bit of a skewed world to me. But I hope it works.
From what I understand, you actually were able to film the scenes at the trailers over a two-week period sequentially. Does a shoot like that let the reality in naturally when the actors are really getting to know each other?
Yeah, I’m almost hesitant to even talk about it because it can’t help but be such a cliche, but it’s really true in this case [where] we were there telling a story about a group of characters who would never be neighbors otherwise, thrown together in a crazy situation and become friends, and it was completely what happened in making this film. Josh [O’Connor] is from the UK, Kali Reis is from Philadelphia and then [we had] all these locals from Alamosa, Monta Vista and Crestone and some local theater college kids in the crew and some New York hipsters and like me and the Telluride gang, so it was some rednecks, some hippies and kind of an odd bunch building something together. When you do that, you just do become friends and our production designer Juliana [Barreto Barreto] and her team had built this incredible set, so we were just totally in it and surrounded by it. Film is not a holistic medium at the end of the day. It’s fractured and a bit spastic, like the opposite of what makes theater so holy. So to dip a toe in some kind of theatrical continuity is very rare in the form and to not have to run around to have some version of order was especially helpful for all the first-time actors.
How much of an idea did you have for the characters versus what that particular mix of actors could bring to the roles?
There were versions of those characters written in the script and then the casting was fairly organic, meeting people or sometimes deciding to bring one of my friends in and that would shift who the characters were. But I don’t believe in asking people to play themselves. Of course, you’re bringing in a person to play something similar to themselves, but I actually think it’s harder to try to play yourself than it is to try to play a character, so it’s good to give someone a few lies to slip into about their character. One of the scenes in the movie that I’m most proud of and that’s my favorite is this little sequence of seeing the quotidian life there [at the trailers], like doing laundry and being on your phone and I like it because when art really works, it can take you to a point where something so small and benign can feel really immense. And that moment does, which is really credit to those actors.
What was it like to create a shoot around this specific parcel of land? From what I understand, you were seeing how the sun could hit it just right?
Yeah, we spent days out there in this piece of land, just like watching the sun, watching the wind and deciding how to orient the set accordingly to maximize dawns and dusks and backlight. Of course, you start shooting and it’s just cloudy or something [else] and that’s the dance. You put in so much time and so many resources to prepare to have the best shot, but it’s always a roll of the dice. You can’t stop, so when you’ve got the clouds, you shoot the clouds. When you’ve got the sun, you shoot the sun. You hope that all the work and prep will tilt the odds in your favor somehow by the end. But you always get something crazy, like a crazy rainbow that totally changes a scene in a way you could never have imagined, much less budgeted, so I like a place like the high plains of Colorado that has to be one of the world’s great places to watch weather. I don’t know many other jobs where you’re just that hyper aware of the climate all day long and it’s pretty profound.
You get an amazing lightning storm in the film. When something like that happens, do you hustle everyone onto set to get it?
At first, there’s a little bit like, “Oh crap, it’s going to shut us down” [because] lightning can be [risky]. You have to stop shooting if it’s too close and then there’s a moment, like “Oh, no way, we’ve got to go get this and let’s figure out a little moment.” But it’s an interesting question too [when] you’ll be shooting a scene and some amazing clouds will start to form and it’s a little like, “Do you go and chase these clouds? Or do you stick to what’s in the script?” You never know. But that’s the job — toeing the line between vision and reality. It’s never a perfect equation. But everyone gives it their best.
What was it like finding a partner in Josh who’d be up for an adventure like that?
One of the many things that I really appreciate about him is he has this unrelenting ability to be delighted. In the many months that we were out in this place that is so familiar to me and so new to him, he never ceased to be amazed and delighted by things. Which I sense is just a real part of who he is. There’s like a sense of wonder to it, which is really inspiring. And I think that place is special, so it’s special to see other people find it special. And people love him and he loves people. He’s one of the easiest characters to hang out with, whether it’s on a red carpet or working on a farm, which he was doing. The casting was a little unconventional, specifically because this character was so stripped of everything that defines him — physically, geographically — so there was this question of who can fill this body with enough soul to make it compelling, even [when the character is left] with nothing, which is whatever the ineffable thing that we call presence or soul but also just real skill and a real craft.
You’ve said elsewhere one of the reasons you appreciated having Kali Reis on set was because she was someone who has become an actor but had a background in boxing, so could relate to that time of being a nonprofessional, working with the first-time actors on this. How much are you thinking about the group dynamics aside from the characters when casting?
You do think about it. I was definitely aware that, for example, Josh doing a movie like “God’s Own Country,” and certainly working with Alice Rohrwacher, that he was familiar with these setups — remote, rural, non-professional actors — and that he liked that. Kali Reis was also very conscious of what it’s like to be the non-actor on set, and she knows what it’s like to be the pro, so the idea was that she could help bridge those worlds a little bit. It is a fragile thing, and it really only takes one bad apple, so it is important to try to put together a good group.
What was it like to put together a crew for this? I’m guessing they contributed a lot of local flavor.
That’s one of the best parts. There’s not really a professional crew base where we film, but we hired a lot of college drama students from Adams State College in Alamosa and our departments work by a basic rule of “We’ll find what we need here.” I remember going with Juliana, the production [designer], to these houses of these people she was meeting and [they’d say] “You have to see this cabinet from my great-grandmother” or “You have to see this chair that my grandfather made” and it’s like this yellow chair that [you think] what a crazy choice for 1890, but it’s real and really magical.
You step into the house of Amy Madigan’s character Bess in this movie and you really do feel walking into this sacred place.
That’s the local pastor’s house. Fortunately, he let us put lots of fake pot plants in there.
There’s that edge that keeps your films interesting. I love the score on this, and I just wonder what’s it like because it’s so delicate. It has such a delicate touch to it. I wonder what it’s like to put music on something like this.
It was really challenging to find music that doesn’t step too hard, and I hope we succeeded. The instrumentation and the rhythms are all tapping into variations of American rural musical tradition and we worked with Jake Fussell and Jim Elkington, these two guys who hadn’t done a soundtrack before but are great musicians, and I was really interested in working with Jake especially because he’s really a folklorist. He doesn’t write lyrics, but he’s an interpreter and thinks of himself almost as a quilter, putting together pieces of folklore. What I really appreciate about his work is it’s so connected into tradition but completely unnostalgic, which is how I want the film to feel.
The part of the film that really moved me when you’re dealing with these ideas of what can be taken away is how Bess says the name of her brother Theo out loud so he’ll simply exist, even when he can’t be present. What was it like figuring out in general how something that was absent could have a place in the story?
I have a feeling most people don’t pick up on that little plot point and it was one that certainly plenty of people in the edit would have been happy to see go away. But it always mattered to me — these questions of how do you remember things or people — and one of the things that we do have are certain traditions [such as] funerals, memorials, or traditions of what you say to someone who’s lost someone. There’s a bit of a framework for how to think about loss, which doesn’t necessarily make it any easier or less painful, but at least there are tools in a way that we don’t have with a house, for example, or a place, or a version of nature that’s gone. You don’t have those traditions of how to understand that or even discuss it. I don’t really have an answer to your question, but these different versions of remembering and memorializing, and how do we do it, and how do these different approaches to the past affect our present and future, which of course they very much do, it’s mystifying to me and compelling [for that reason].
It’s something you express so beautifully in this film and here as well. And from what I understand, the area that burned down has become so green that you had trouble pointing a camera in the right direction to capture the devastation for the purposes of this film. Did that natural rebirth give this film a certain energy as you were making it?
Totally. That was one of the biggest challenges of the whole movie was hiding all the regrowth of beautiful Aspen shoots. The art team spent a couple weeks running around with biodegradable black paint covering up this brand new forest and the metaphors are pretty self-evident, but it makes pretty clear that there are bigger, stranger time scales at work on nature than our conceptions of it. But that was an evergreen forest up there in Forbes Park that burned and it’s the aspens that come in first afterwards. That’s an 80-year cycle and then the evergreens in turn would take those over and then burn and then the Aspens would come back, so it’s weird, of course because those cycles are contorted by climate change and what we’ve done. but there’s also something slightly soothing that there’s like a bigger plan at work somehow. So it’s amazing and it’s crazy to see landscape change that dramatically.
“Rebuilding” opens on November 14th in Los Angeles and New York and expands on November 21st.