Kicking off the Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Competition this year is Omaha, an increasingly bleak road trip with a recently widowed father, his two kids and their dog. Set against the 2008 financial crisis, Omaha begins with a dad (John Magaro) facing foreclosure on his house after losing what appears to be everything professionally as well as the tragic death of his wife and mother to their two kids, Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and Charlie (Wyatt Solis).

As the film begins, he faces this latest crisis and gathers up the kids and their pet dog to jump into the increasingly unreliable family car, which usually only starts and gets going as Ella runs alongside and helps push it forward. And so they are off on an unspecified journey across the American Southwest with stops along the way that begin to explain — however subtly — this dad’s deep money problems. There’s...