ALAMOSA — Stories rarely come to writers fully assembled and Max Walker-Silverman’s creation of “Rebuilding” was no exception.

“I grew up in Telluride where there was the hippie scene, but I also spent a lot of time in Norwood, which is sort of a sister town,” he says.  “I had a lot of friends there, and I’d go home with them after school. I met some tough dudes who had daughters and they would kind of melt when their daughters were around.

“The character of Dusty kind of came from this relationship between a cowboy and his daughter, an iconic, individualistic character and his daughter, who’s the opposite.”  

Then the summers of 2020 and 2021 hit southwestern Colorado. “It was dry. Really dry. Still beautiful – it’s always beautiful – but in a very different way.” From a young age, Walker-Silverman had been aware of climate change yet felt powerless to do anything about it. At some point, he decided to write a “climate change story” of the West.

“It all came together when my grandmother’s house burned down in a wildfire,” he says. “And of course it would. It was the grounding, contemporary experience.”

There have been multiple reviews of the film since it was released on November 15 – almost all filled with significant praise – and the concept of community is frequently mentioned. It’s a term Walker-Silverman embraces.

“One of the things I find enchanting about the Valley is that the people are similar to those I grew up with. The different characters of the modern west. You’ve got your Crestone spiritual types and your Hispanic ranchers and your cowboys and your funky, weird, off grid people on the flats and your church ladies,” he says. “All the different sorts that make up what I think is much more diverse than people give it credit for.”

So, that was a basic part of “the project”, as he calls it. “We threw all these different people together who may not seem to share much in common but they’re going to share one profound, hard experience because that’s what happens on a film.”

But then “the project itself became the exact same thing,” he says.  “We had hipster crew members from New York and Adams State theater majors and local mechanics and teachers and wranglers. Beneath the hardship are a million tiny stories of people taking care of each other.” He grows quiet for a moment. “That was the melancholy hope of the story that I wanted to pay tribute to out in the sage.”

There’s a slight change in his voice. “I get down all the time, especially looking at the future. What’s my future going to be like?  It’s so hard to be optimistic but I realized the choice of believing that the world will be there and it will be beautiful is so key. It’s something you have to choose every day somehow.”

With a bevy of awards for his performances and being in greater and greater demand, Josh O’Connor, who plays Dusty, is a face that is increasingly well-known to audiences. Yet, in conversation, he reflects much of the same humility and thoughtfulness that makes his portrayal of Dusty resonate so deeply with people.

“”Rebuilding” came about when I’d had a year doing two films that were very important to me. I’d been dealing with a lot of grief in my own life, and often characters will help you understand your own feelings. So I’d been kind of waiting to find the right thing when the script landed on my desk. It was a script that answered where I was at. It’s all about community and people coming together. I’m a natural isolator. I’m not brilliant at keeping up community. So, it came at the right time.

“I went out there and we became that magical, undefined combination of people like Dwight (Mondragon), and the local non-professional actors who banded together and various people on the crew and Max and Jess and Don Janvey and the costume people and – it just felt like this small troupe of creative people out there in the desert creating something very meaningful. I’ve had experiences like this before somewhat, but they are very rare.”

“Rebuilding” was not the first time O’Connor had worked with non-professional actors and crew members from other professions. “I went to drama school and love working with actors more than anything but the experience of working with people from other backgrounds and showing them this entirely new world…it’s really a gift to be able to do that.”

O’Connor also believes that there is an aspect in working with people new to the experience that “really adds something” to the film.

“There’s an honesty to their performance,” he says. “Most actors battle with that realism all the time, a kind of unperformed performance. But to people like Dwight, it sort of comes naturally. They all did an incredible job. And it’s also nerve racking and bizarre. But Dwight and the whole team, they were so brilliant at lifting the words off the page and making them feel unique and real.”

When asked about his impression of the Valley, O’Connor says, “The one thing I found so haunting was the landscape. You can see the scars on the landscape and it has this ghostly kind of feeling.”

And then, once again, he brings up the people.

“I learned so much from the people who were there. There were so many special experiences I will remember. Lily (the actor who played his daughter) and I took horseback riding lessons, and being on horseback in that landscape, feeling the sun and the wind in our hair... Jobs like this don’t come around so often.  Someday, I really hope to return to the Valley, and see those people who have become my friends.”

Kali Reis played Mila, a single mother who lost her husband in the fire and the primary character in the FEMA Camp where Dusty lives. Reis describes herself as being new to acting, having transitioned just a few years ago from a successful career as a professional boxer. But after being nominated for an Emmy for her performance in HBO’s “True Detective: Night County” and her recent nomination for an Independent Spirit Award for best supporting actor in “Rebuilding”, she’s clearly garnered a reputation in the film industry.

When asked what drew her to the script and the character Mila, she says, “Mila has a calmness to her, A very thoughtful and calculated calmness. I call it a ‘loud calmness’. You can see her processing things, but she doesn’t say much. So, when she speaks, her words  matter. Everything that she says comes with a lot of thought behind it. That really drew me to her character.”

In discussing the film, the word hope is viewed as a common theme, something Reis agrees with. “We live in a world that’s so…” She thinks for a moment before continuing. “Hope is really hard to come by. You try to see around the smoke but it’s really hard to do. This film shows how people really can come together. It takes a village to raise a person and it takes a village to get through hard times. Things can be rebuilt. This film gives hope and a tangible vision that people can understand.”

Reis says working with the local actors was “refreshing” and readily admits that she learned a great deal from the local people who were fellow cast members. “I loved hearing their stories. It was also weird for them to ask me for tips. I’m here being kind of a senior actor and I loved being able to share what little I know of them. I loved hearing about their lives – they were really resilient, too.”

In terms of what she’ll remember of the San Luis Valley, she doesn’t hesitate. “Oh, man, I could look at the sunset every day. I had my nice little home, and it’s so, so beautiful just to sit and look and take in a different kind of nature. Going into the woods where the fire really did happen…it’s a different kind of beauty. I just love that place. I would love to go back.”

"What makes this film special is what makes the Valley special," says co-producer on the film and Valley native, Katie Dokson. The people are hardworking, genuine, resilient and colllaborative. The filmmakers created a beautiful opportunity to share what makes our home unique, both with each other and with the world."

“My hope for the film is that people recognize themselves and their lives and feel honored by that,” Walker-Silverman concludes. “And the work of the film…the work is to imagine that which we hope to be true.” Again, a pause. “I want to believe that if we have this capacity to know and care for each other under difficult, even harmful circumstances, then that that ability exists outside of that, as well. But to fight for something, you also have to create something worth fighting for.”

“Rebuilding” is currently playing at the Alamosa Ski-Hi 6 Theater with daily shows through next Thursday at 2:15 pm and 7:45 pm.. Alamosa Ski-Hi 6 Theater is located at 7089 W. US Highway 160 in Alamosa.

Deepest thanks to Katie Dokson, without whose help these stories would not have been written.