Americana (2023 film)

Americana
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tony Tost
Written by	Tony Tost
Produced by	Alex Saks
Starring	Sydney Sweeney Paul Walter Hauser Halsey Simon Rex Eric Dane Zahn McClarnon
Cinematography	Nigel Bluck
Edited by	Peter McNulty
Music by	David Fleming
Production companies	Bron Studios Saks Picture Company
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release dates	March 17, 2023 (2023-03-17) (SXSW) August 15, 2025 (2025-08-15) (United States)
Running time	107 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	~$500,000[2]

Americana is a 2023 American crime thriller film written and directed by Tony Tost in his film debut. It stars Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Eric Dane, Zahn McClarnon, and Simon Rex.

With filming taking place in New Mexico in 2022, the film premiered at the 2023 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. Lionsgate acquired distribution rights and theatrically released Americana on August 15, 2025. It received generally positive reviews from critics.

Cal Starr, a young boy living in a small South Dakota town, develops an obsession with Native American culture after watching numerous Western films on television and comes to believe he is the reincarnation of Lakota leader Sitting Bull. One day, after purchasing his own bow and arrows, he returns home to find his troubled mother Mandy has attacked his abusive father Dillon MacIntosh and is about to flee in Dillon's car with a $100,000 Lakota ghost shirt Dillon had stolen. Mandy tries to take Cal with her, but he refuses, believing he needs to be reunited with "his people". As Mandy leaves, Dillon recovers and exits the house, only for Cal to kill him with the bow and arrows.

Days earlier, down-on-his-luck handyman Lefty Ledbetter befriends stuttering waitress Penny Jo Poplin, who dreams of country music stardom. While working, Penny accidentally receives a note on a napkin meant for another customer revealing the date and time of a meeting in the diner concerning a large sum of money. Hoping to send Penny to Nashville, Lefty suggests they eavesdrop on the meeting. The meeting turns out to be between businessman Roy Lee Dean and Dillon and his associate Reggie Dale. Roy, who has a sinister interest in Native American culture, hires Dillon and Reggie to steal the Lakota ghost shirt from wealthy local Pendleton Duvall.

Dillon and Reggie break into Duvall's house and kill him and several of his friends before fleeing with the shirt. When Reggie begins to panic over the killings, Dillon murders him with a screwdriver and drives away with the shirt whilst being unknowingly followed by Lefty and Penny. Dillon returns home and announces his intention to Mandy for the two of them to embark on a new life after they sell the ghost shirt. Mandy instead strikes him in the head with a hammer, leading to the events of the opening scene.

Lefty and Penny follow Mandy to Wyoming, where Mandy, having nowhere else to go, returns to her father Hiram's ranch. Hiram is revealed to be a radical patriarch who treats his wife and daughters as servants and allows Mandy to stay with him only if she abides by his house rules, to which she reluctantly agrees. Meanwhile, Cal encounters a local Native American gang led by the cynical Hank "Ghost Eye" Spears, and attempts to convince them that he is Sitting Bull's reincarnation, in the process revealing the location of the ghost shirt. The gang, who have been desperate to retrieve the ghost shirt from non-Native hands, leave for Wyoming with Cal in tow.

At the Starr ranch, Lefty tries to enter the house but is shot and mortally wounded by Hiram. The gang arrives minutes later and begin shooting arrows into the house, killing Hiram and the other Starr men while Mandy convinces her mother and sisters to arm themselves and fight back. Both sides agree to a ceasefire when Mandy reveals to the gang that she has arranged for Roy to pick up the ghost shirt at the ranch. Mandy and Ghost Eye strike a deal to ambush and kill Roy, allowing Mandy to procure his money and Ghost Eye to retrieve the ghost shirt.

At nightfall, Roy arrives at the ranch, but the plan goes awry when he notices a still-alive Lefty and attempts to shoot him. Penny, in an attempt to save Lefty, accidentally reveals the gang's presence, resulting in a shootout during which Mandy is wounded and the entire gang is killed except for Ghost Eye, who gains the upper hand and ultimately kills Roy himself. In the chaos, Penny retrieves Roy's money and splits it between her and Mandy's family before fleeing with Lefty and Cal, who now has the ghost shirt. Mandy, meanwhile, is taken to the hospital by her family.

Cal has Penny and Lefty drop him off at the gang's headquarters. When Ghost Eye returns, Cal gives him the shirt, and Ghost Eye thanks him, though still shuts him out as he is not a true Native American. Lefty succumbs to his wounds and proclaims his love for Penny before dying, devastating her. Mandy quietly sneaks out of the hospital following her treatment and happily reunites with Cal back in town while an emotionally ravaged Penny begins her drive to Nashville.

• Sydney Sweeney as Penny Jo Poplin
• Paul Walter Hauser as Lefty Ledbetter
• Halsey as Mandy Starr
• Eric Dane as Dillon MacIntosh
• Zahn McClarnon as Ghost Eye
• Gavin Maddox Bergman as Cal Starr
• Simon Rex as Roy Lee Dean
• Derek Hinkey as Hank Spears
• Toby Huss as Pendleton Duvall
• Harriet Sansom Harris as Tish
• Donald Cerrone as Sheriff Cole Pickering

In February 2022, Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, Gavin Maddox Bergman, Harriet Sansom Harris, Derek Hinkey, Eric Dane, Zahn McClarnon and Donald Cerrone joined the cast of the film, then titled National Anthem, with Tony Tost directing from a screenplay he wrote.^[3][4]

Principal photography began in February 2022, in New Mexico.^[5]

Americana had its world premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 17, 2023.^[6] In March 2024, Lionsgate acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film.^[7]

The film was theatrically released on August 15, 2025.^[8] It was originally scheduled to be released on August 22, 2025.^[9]

In the United States and Canada, Americana was released alongside Nobody 2. The film grossed $500,000 on opening weekend.^[10]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 67% of 49 critics' reviews are positive.^[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[12]

For Deadline, Valerie Complex wrote, "Tost's direction manages to avoid the common pitfalls first-time directors encounter by overcomplicating things, but the director keeps it simple by letting characters work within their frame. ... This movie wouldn't be what it is without its rich and enjoyable cast — with Halsey and McClarnon being the standouts — of individuals who are determined, intelligent, uproarious and have different ideas of success and how to achieve it."^[13] Rafael Motamayor of IndieWire gave it a B+, writing, "The film is clearly a homage to the [Western] genre and all its sides, both good and bad. The director shoots the vast arid landscapes and secluded rural roads of middle America with a melancholic eye, capturing the iconography of the genre while contemplating whether it still has a place in cinema today. With a film like this now in its arsenal, it surely does."^[14]

• Americana at IMDb