Alexander Payne · 2013 · road

Alexander Payne's 2013 film, shot in stark black and white across the Great Plains. An old man believes he has won a sweepstakes and means to get to Nebraska to claim it; his son drives him instead, and the trip from Montana through the son's ancestral small town becomes a tender, funny meditation on family, memory, and the lies we let people keep.

1. 1
   Billings

   Convinced a junk-mail letter means he has won a million dollars, the stubborn, fading Woody Grant sets out from Billings, Montana to collect it.

2. 2
   Hawthorne

   His son drives him, and a detour to Woody's hometown of Hawthorne stirs up old debts, old loves, and grasping relatives.

3. 3
   Lincoln

   They reach the sweepstakes office in Lincoln, where the prize proves empty but the journey gives a son his father, briefly, whole.