Tumbleweeds

Watch Tumbleweeds (1999) online on iFILM — a drama directed by Gavin O'Connor, led by Janet McTeer in a performance that landed her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Mary Jo Walker's answer to every failed relationship is the same: pack the car and drive. Her twelve-year-old daughter Ava has made that trip too many times to count.

San Diego is supposed to be different. A trucker named Jack helps them get there, Ava lands the lead in the school play, and for a while it feels like staying might actually happen. Then Jack shows a side of himself that changes everything. Mary Jo starts making plans to leave again — and for the first time, Ava refuses to go. Kimberly J. Brown plays Ava with an unnerving accuracy that sometimes overshadows the adults around her.

The tagline says it plainly: "They ran away from everything but each other." That tension — a mother's restlessness against a daughter's need for roots — is what the film is really about. Stream Tumbleweeds online on iFILM.