'An American epic, a powerful family and coming-of-age story.'
'An American epic, a powerful family and coming-of-age story.'
The documentary follows young cowboy Crowley over ten years as he comes of age in the vastness of Colorado. On his rocky path, he endures loss, separation, and shattered dreams—yet he faces life with his head held high, carrying the unshakable resolve of a cowboy who never backs down. An honest tale from the heartland of America.
Comparable in scope to such epic longitudinal portraits as 7 Up and Boyhood, director André Hörmann’s The Cowboy sets its sights on the most iconic of all American archetypes — the Western cowboy. In 2015, when we first meet 11-year-old Crowley McCuistion, he’s riding horses and learning how rope on a Colorado ranch. Over the course of the next ten years, we bear witness as Crowley grows from boyhood to early adulthood and sees his dream of being an American cowboy prove as elusive as a runaway bull. At turns light and dark; intimate and vast, The Cowboy takes us on an unforgettable journey, ultimately earning its place in the pantheon of great Western sagas.
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.
Valentina Grignoli - laRegione
The Moveable Fest (by Stephen Saito):
Locarno Film Fest 2025 Review: André Hörmann’s “The Cowboy” Shows a Young Man Saddled Beyond His Years
Blickpunkt Film (by Heike Angemaier):
REVIEW LOCARNO: „The Cowboy“
Unseen Films (by Steve Kopian):
The Cowboy(2025) Locarno 2025
laRegione (by Valentina Grignoli):
'The Cowboy’, la tenerezza di uno sguardo che cresce
The Cowboy opens to the distorted sounds of a folk guitar and to picturesque images of the American West. From behind the camera, André Hörmann invites Crowley, a young man in his early twenties, to explain once more what it takes to live the life of a cowboy. Wearing his hat, Crowley remains silent, trying to remember what he said when the director asked him the same question ten years earlier. The young adult is then seen as a child again, an eleven-year-old reciting, sure of himself, an archetypal definition of a cowboy. From the outset, The Cowboy reveals the scope of its ambition: to cover the life of a young man, from his childhood in Colorado in 2015 to his entering into adulthood and starting an independent life in Texas, in the city of Happy, in 2024.
How does one become oneself within a fixed model and in a world where the very town names affirm our happiness? More than just an initiatory story, André Hörmann’s film (who put together and completed several short films that already focused on Crowley) offers a nuanced portrait of Americana and its archetypes. Although the film begins with a seemingly almost stereotyped model of life in the West, the initial foundation of values and imperatives gradually cracks. Crowley finds himself rapidly confronted with disillusionment and family dramas, yet his life is captured without any ostentation and moral judgment.
Thomas Gerber (selection committe, Semaine de la Critique Locarno)
© Locarno Film Festival / Ti-Press
a film by ANDRÉ HÖRMANN
with CROWLEY MCCUISTION, YANCIE MCCUISTION FARRAH LEE, CHANEY MCCUISTION, CURT MCCUISTION
director of photography TOM BERGMANN co-author and editor VINCENT ASSMANN
sound NIKOLA CHAPELLE and OUSSAMA ABDOUH
music ROGER GOULA sound design and mix ALEX RUBIN, BVFT
production manager BETTINA MORLOCK associate producer NEVO SHINAAR
commissioning editor KATHRIN BRINKMANN co-producer MARK MITTEN
producer HEIKE KUNZE writer and director ANDRÉ HÖRMANN
a TELEKULT PRODUCTION in co-production with MITTEN MEDIA and ZDF in collaboration with ARTE supported with funds from FILMFÖRDERUNGSANSTALT, FILMFERNSEHFONDS BAYERN, DEUTSCHER FILMFÖRDERFONDS and KURATORIUM JUNGER DEUTSCHER FILM
in association with SVERIGES TELEVISION AB (SVT) and TVONTARIO (TVO)
Germany/USA 2025 | 90 min | color | DCP | Dolby Digital 5.1 | English | French or German subtitles
TELEKULT
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