In a rare lead role, Dale Dickey, one of contemporary cinema’s finest character actors, takes center stage as Faye, a widow waiting for a night that could change her life. In Max Walker-Silverman’s auspicious directorial debut, hope, longing, natural beauty and the near-graspable dream of self-sufficiency come together in an unconventional romance that compresses decades of memories into a fateful reunion. Wes Studi co-stars as the childhood sweetheart Faye anticipates will grace her Colorado campside trailer. There will be music, and ice cream, and an aching relief neither expects.

Dickey commands the screen in this gently comic yet deep-feeling minimalist portrait in ways we’ve seldom seen from her before. Walker-Silverman offers the audience exactly what he should: a sense of a life lived, as well as an insatiable hunger for new adventures that’s all the more poignant for what came before. Against a gorgeous and eternal landscape, Faye feels the limited number of years that remain and the experiences she can squeeze into them. And yet it’s that very reverence for the land and what it can provide that sustains her — and allows her to feel her grief, and so much more. —Inkoo Kang