The story of Brady Jandreau's fight to reclaim his life in The Rider
The Rider opens with a quiet moment of reckoning. Brady Jandreau, a young rodeo champion from South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, lies in a hospital bed after a brutal fall from a horse. The accident was real — it happened to Jandreau in 2015, and the film uses that lived trauma as its foundation. What unfolds isn't a triumphant comeback narrative. Instead, Chloé Zhao's 2018 film traces the harder, messier path of a man trying to figure out who he is when the thing that's always defined him — riding, competing, the rodeo lifestyle — has been medically forbidden. The doctors are clear: another head injury could be catastrophic. But Jandreau is a cowboy. He's been riding since he was eighteen months old. He doesn't know anything else.
Zhao doesn't give us melodrama. What she gives us is something closer to documentary truth, shot through a western lens. The Rider watches as Jandreau returns to his family's land, reconnects with his horse, and wrestles with the question every athlete fears: if you can't do the one thing you're built for, what are you? His father (Tim Jandreau, Jandreau's real father) and sister (Lilly Jandreau) appear throughout, not as supporting characters but as the actual people who lived this story alongside him. That authenticity — the casting of real people in real places — becomes the film's emotional core.
Behind the making of The Rider: how Chloé Zhao created a contemporary western
Chloé Zhao wrote, produced, and directed The Rider as an intimate character study grounded in the actual lives of Lakota and Dakota Sioux communities on and around Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, where it won the Art Cinema Award — a significant recognition that signaled critics were seeing something special in Zhao's approach. When The Rider rolled out to U.S. theaters on April 13, 2018, it found an audience hungry for stories that didn't condescend to rural or indigenous life. The box office wasn't massive — it grossed $4.2 million — but that modest return masks the film's cultural footprint and its influence on Zhao's later career (she'd go on to direct Nomadland, which won Best Picture in 2021).
What makes the production remarkable is Zhao's casting philosophy. Brady Jandreau is not a trained actor; he's a real rodeo rider and member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. His family — his father Tim, his sister Lilly, his friend Lane Scott, and veterinarian Cat Clifford — all play versions of themselves or people very close to their actual lives. This isn't method acting. It's something more radical: it's people living their own story in front of a camera. Zhao shot extensively on the Badlands landscape, letting the wide-open South Dakota terrain become a character itself. The film runs 102 minutes and carries no MPAA rating restriction, making it accessible to a broad audience, though its themes are decidedly adult.
What makes The Rider stand out: raw performances and the cost of identity
Honestly, what's most striking about The Rider is how it refuses easy sentiment. Jandreau's performance — and it is a performance, even if he's playing something close to himself — carries a kind of quiet desperation that doesn't announce itself. There's a scene where he tries to ride again, and his hands shake. Not with fear exactly, but with the muscle memory of a body that knows what it's supposed to do and the knowledge that it can't. That contradiction lives in every frame. Critics praised the film for its specificity and its respect for the people and world it depicts. The performances aren't showy; they're lived-in, which makes them harder to shake.
The film also works because Zhao trusts her audience to sit with discomfort. There's no montage of recovery, no triumphant return. Instead, there's a young man trying to find purpose in a world that suddenly doesn't have space for him. He works with horses, he spends time with his family, he tries to figure out if there's a version of himself that doesn't revolve around competition. That's not the stuff of conventional drama — and yet it's profoundly dramatic because it's true. What makes The Rider resonate is that it doesn't pretend to have answers. It just shows up and watches, with genuine affection and without judgment, as someone navigates the wreckage of his own expectations. Movie OTT tracks where contemporary westerns like this one are available to stream, and The Rider's presence across platforms speaks to its enduring relevance.
Where to stream The Rider online
The Rider is currently available on Prime Video, where you can stream it on demand. If you're browsing for where to watch, the "Where to Watch" widget at the top of this page will show you all the platforms currently carrying the film — that's updated regularly so you'll always know your options. Prime Video's catalog of independent and festival-recognized films makes it a natural home for Zhao's work. Since the film premiered in 2017 and rolled out theatrically in 2018, it's had time to find its audience through streaming, which is where a lot of viewers discover smaller, critically acclaimed dramas that didn't get wide theatrical runs. Movie OTT helps you cut through the noise and find exactly where to watch what you're looking for.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Is The Rider based on a true story?
Yes. The film is inspired by the real-life experience of Brady Jandreau, who suffered a serious riding accident in 2015. Chloé Zhao cast Jandreau and his actual family members to tell a version of his own story, blurring the line between documentary and fiction.
Q: Who directed The Rider?
Chloé Zhao wrote, produced, and directed The Rider. It was her breakthrough feature before she went on to direct Nomadland (2020), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Q: What happened to Brady Jandreau in real life?
Jandreau suffered a severe head injury in a rodeo accident in 2015. Medical professionals advised him against returning to professional rodeo competition due to the risk of catastrophic injury from another fall. The film explores how he comes to terms with that reality.
Q: Where was The Rider filmed?
The film was shot on location in the Badlands of South Dakota, primarily on and around the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the home of the Oglala Lakota tribe. The landscape and community are integral to the film's authenticity.
Q: Did The Rider win any awards?
Yes. The Rider won the Art Cinema Award at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, where it premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section. It was also critically praised for its storytelling and performances.
Final thoughts on The Rider
The Rider isn't a feel-good story, and that's exactly why it matters. It's a film about the gap between who we are and who we thought we'd be — a gap that's especially cruel when your identity is tied to your body, your skill, your place in a tradition. Zhao doesn't resolve that tension. She just sits with it, respectfully, letting Jandreau and his family inhabit their own complexity. If you're looking for a western that's nothing like the old myths, that respects indigenous life and rural experience without romanticizing either, this is it. It'll stay with you.
