“Rebuilding”, interview with the director Max Walker-Silverman

At the 23rd edition of Alice nella Città, director Max Walker-Silverman presented his deeply personal new film, “Rebuilding”, a poetic and humanist tale of loss, memory, and regeneration.
Inspired by his own family’s experience, the filmmaker recalls, “The film is based on seeing my grandmother’s house burn in a wildfire, which was at first one of the great tragedies that has happened in the family, but in the weeks and months afterwards, it became a more complicated and interesting thing.”

For Walker-Silverman, the film’s genesis was not the fire itself, but what followed. “It became about going back to this land that had been black and dead and seeing it covered in wildflowers,” he says. “There will always be a melancholy to it, but there’s a beauty there still, and a sense of life and community, and somehow a path forward.”
From this experience came a story that transforms devastation into rebirth.

Beyond survival: rediscovering community

Although “Rebuilding” deals with the aftermath of a natural disaster, its emotional core lies elsewhere. When asked whether the film is a story of survival, Max Walker-Silverman reflects: “It is a story about survival, but I hope it’s more than that, because it’s not just about the physical basics of survival, it’s about the emotional side too, and the community side.”

He continues: “After fires, or floods, or earthquakes, or even wars, the way that people care for each other is really just the most amazing thing. It usually doesn’t last as long as it should, but there’s a hope in it nonetheless.”
The film thus captures the fleeting yet transformative power of human connection — the solidarity that emerges when everything else has been reduced to ashes.

Redefining masculinity and strength

At the heart of “Rebuilding” is Dusty, played by Josh O’Connor, a stoic rancher struggling to start anew. Through this quiet character, Walker-Silverman explores a more vulnerable form of masculinity. “This is a man who really believes that he’s self-reliant and that that’s his strength, without realizing how much harder that is making his life and the life of his family,” he explains.

In Dusty’s journey, strength becomes synonymous with openness. “At the end, it’s a story about this guy accepting not only that other people need him, but that he needs other people. And that’s not weakness; that is strength, and that takes courage.”
In a subtle critique of the myth of the self-reliant cowboy, the director exposes the emotional cost of isolation, particularly in rural America. “That story is real and needed everywhere, but especially where I’m from,” he adds.

Memory, home, and the places that change

Throughout the interview, Max Walker-Silverman returns to the themes of memory and home — notions made fragile by loss but strengthened by remembrance. “Somewhere between our memories of a place and our hopes for it is home,” he reflects. “I’ve seen the places change too much to believe it’s entirely a physical thing. But what we remember, what we hope for — if those revolve around a single idea or place — I think that’s probably home.”

This reflection connects to one of the film’s most touching moments, when a grandmother speaks of keeping her brother’s memory alive. For Walker-Silverman, this memory becomes more powerful than loss itself: “The things we’ve lost can still be very real and can still be very much with us, and it can be worth having had them even if they’re lost.”

A wish for beauty

Asked what he hopes audiences will take away from “Rebuilding”, the director’s answer is simple yet profound: “The greatest experiences of art to me are when I close the book or take off the headphones and look out the window and just enjoy what I see a little bit more. I hope there’s some experience of beauty in the film that makes someone’s life just a little more colorful.”

With its quiet strength and luminous empathy, “Rebuilding” reminds us that beauty can survive catastrophe — and that sometimes, rebuilding means learning to see the world anew.

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