The Cowboy

At 11-years-old, Crowley McCuistion has a bright future ahead of him as a cowboy in the plains of Colorado. Training since he was a toddler and encouraged by his strict father Curt, mother Farrah, and supportive older brother Yancie, the young Crowley knows exactly who he wants to be when he grows up. As he says, “Cowboys have to be tough… you have to shake it off and go on with life.” But when an unexpected tragedy hits the family in his teenage years, Crowley learns it’s not so easy to shake things off. Turns out the challenges of bull riding are nothing compared to the struggles of everyday life.

For 10 years, director André Hörmann (who returns to the Festival after his Chicago-set Ringside) visited with Crowley and his family members, observing them with sensitivity and sympathy. While the film initially shows many of the tropes familiar to cowboy life—a culture rooted in masculinity and ruggedness—such hardened layers quickly peel away, revealing the vulnerabilities and fragilities that lie beneath the surface. A longitudinal and piercing coming-of-age docu-drama, The Cowboy penetrates stereotypes to reveal a complex portrait of life in the American heartland.