Over a year ago, “Train Dreams” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. 12 months later, almost to the day of its world premiere, it earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Cinematography (Adolpho Veloso), Original Song (“Train Dreams” by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner), and Adapted Screenplay (Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar). While it has an outside shot in a couple of those categories, Bentley and his colleagues may find more love this Sunday, when the 41st Film Independent Spirit Awards are handed out.
Bentley, who earned his first nomination last year in the same category for “Sing Sing,” was on cloud nine when we caught up last month. “Train Dreams” found lots of love from the Academy and numerous guilds this awards season, but one key part of the movie didn’t make the Oscar cut: star Joel Edgerton. That clearly stung a bit.
“Joel had gotten a couple of big offers along the way that he could have taken and would’ve been bigger films than ours. And he stayed the course,” Bentley recalls. “He stuck with ‘Train Dreams’ and stayed true to it and waited for us to go, and gave me a lot of encouragement along the way when I was kind of feeling down about the delay. He really buoyed me. And so it’s a little bittersweet that he didn’t get nominated today because I think the film doesn’t exist and doesn’t work without him.”
Over the course of our convo, Bentley reflected on when he knew the movie might be something outside of the Sundance bubble, Edgerton’s contributions, and how he planned on celebrating.
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The Playlist: You’ve now directed a Best Picture nominee. How do you feel about that?
Clint Bentley: It’s surreal, man. It’s like I’m over the moon. I can’t believe it. We made this little independent film out in Washington State, and here we are. We’re nominated alongside some of my absolute heroes. It’s crazy.
And I am talking to you from Sundance, where you premiered a year ago, almost to the day. You had no idea you were going to get picked up by Netflix when you got to Park City. Can you talk about that part of the journey?
Not at all. I mean, we went into Sundance with a wet print, as they say. We had just finished it. We were really trying to get it finished in time, and so I really did not know how it would go over. And I think all of us hope for the best, but you never know. And yeah, it’s all crazy. I mean, this time last year, Greg and I had been nominated for “Sing Sing” for Adapted screenplay and flew to Sundance the same day that we heard about the nomination. And then now we’re going back this year, and we’re going to do a panel on screenwriting at Sundance in three days. But it’s just wild with “Train Dreams.” It’s been a long road from Sundance to here, but it’s also been beautiful to see the groundswell that’s come behind it. We just screened it for a lot of people, and just to see people fall in love and see the crowds and theaters grow along the way. I don’t know. It’s wild.
Do you remember any festivals you went to over the past few months where you thought it might be resonating more than you anticipated?
Toronto was a big one because we had kind of gone dark for a bit, and then we came back out at TIFF nd getting a standing ovation there and just seeing the resonance of the film there in a big room was amazing. SCAD was another one. Just the crowd that we had there. We were in that beautiful theater that is multilevel. It has a balcony, and that was filled out. Chicago was another one. Joel and I went there and screened, and it was a packed house in the Music Box Theater. There were a few that stand out where I was like, “Oh, this is really catching on and resonating with people in a really beautiful but unexpected way.”
You are a credited producer on the film, right? Or are you just an Adapted Screenplay nominee?
Unfortunately not. Yeah. It’s the old arcane 4ules of The Academy. That’s O.K., though. I’m happy I made the film. I’m O.K.
You’re good.
And we got so many nominations for the film. No, yeah, I’m a hundred percent just overjoyed by the day.
When you look back at all of this, was there a moment when you thought the movie might not happen?
True to any other independent film, there were a dozen of these moments along the way where it seemed like it wouldn’t happen. One big one was that we got on the ground with our producers and the department heads in 2023 in the fall to start production. And then the strikes happened and shut us down. And I think another big part that is a little bittersweet for today is that we didn’t end up going until the spring of 2024. And in that time, Joel had gotten a couple of big offers along the way that he could have taken and would’ve been bigger films than ours. And he stayed the course. He stuck with “Train Dreams” and stayed true to it and waited for us to go, and gave me a lot of encouragement along the way when I was kind of feeling down about the delay. He really buoyed me. And so it’s a little bittersweet that he didn’t get nominated today because I think the film doesn’t exist and doesn’t work without him. And he was such an incredible partner along the way, and I couldn’t have done it without him. But yeah, that was a big moment where it was like, “O.K., this might not happen,” but here we are.
It did. And I have to say, Joel missing out on a nomination is one of my major disappointments for the entire season. That category was just too stacked.
And everybody’s very deserving. It’s an incredible, incredible performances in across the board. It’s just the way that it goes sometimes. But I really feel for him.
I as well. But his time will come. I know it will. Delroy Lindo spent 40 years waiting for a nomination.
I know!
It’ll happen, before I let you go really quickly, I do have to tell you, I posted something about “Train Dreams” on BlueSky a few weeks ago, and it went nuts. You would have thought it was TikTok and a million Views. People love this movie.
That’s amazing.
I hope you somehow see that in whatever social media you’re on or whenever you run into people. But I was like, “Oh wow, wasn’t wrong. People do love this.”
Thank you for doing that, and thank you for saying that. And yeah, I mean, that’s been the most special part. Like, awards are amazing for sure, right? They’re very encouraging as an artist to get them. But the notes that I’ve gotten on Instagram, the only one that I’m on, the notes that I get on Instagram from people around the world, people in Turkey telling me how much the film has moved them. In India and Missouri, it’s bananas. And it’s so special to hear notes from people talking about how the film moved them and how it’s inspired them or helped them get past their own loss or just made them appreciate their own life, things like that. It’s really, I feel like we’ve already won.
What are you most looking forward to next?
Honestly, I’m celebrating with friends this morning. My wife and I are with two of our closest friends in Dallas at home, and we’re about to all go have a celebratory breakfast. I’m really enjoying every step of it. It’s really surreal. I mean, I grew up in a double-wide trailer watching the Oscars, and now I get to go again. It’s crazy. I don’t take it for granted for a second. So I’m just enjoying every step of the way.
“Train Dreams” is available to stream on Netflix worldwide.
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Editor-at-Large Gregory Ellwood is one of the entertainment industry's most respected journalists and critics. Based in Los Angeles, he's the only current awards expert who previously worked on Oscar campaigns at a major movie studio. Over the years, he has written for the LA Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vox, among others. He also co-founded the entertainment news site HitFix, which spawned a legion of influential Emmy and WGA Award-winning alumni.
