Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a veteran of three wars, now moves from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller, sharing the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes, and gripping adventures from the far reaches of the globe. On the plains of Texas, he crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will. Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.—Universal Pictures
Paul Greengrass said in an interview in the New York Times on 12/30/2020 how this movie “is the first film I made with a child actor at the heart of it” and he thought that it would be very difficult to cast the role of Johanna but when he saw Helena Zengel’s audition, he said she “was the only person I really had to look at” and that it “was the easiest decision in the film”.
