The Mustang

The Mustang follows Roman Coleman, a man serving time in a Nevada prison for a violent crime. Cut off from the outside world and estranged from his daughter, he is drawn into a rehabilitation program in which inmates train wild mustangs. Roman struggles at first, both with the horses and with the men around him, but a particularly stubborn animal becomes the focus of his attention. Working with it forces him to face the violence in his own past and to reconsider the kind of person he has been.

The film is the first feature directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who wrote the screenplay with Brock Norman Brock. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Roman, with Jason Mitchell, Gideon Adlon, Connie Britton, Bruce Dern and Josh Stewart in supporting roles. It was produced by Alain Goldman and made with 67 credited crew members across Belgian, American and French production companies.

The Mustang runs 96 minutes and was released in March 2019. It took in about 1 million USD worldwide at the box office, a modest figure for a film with this cast. On IMDb it holds a 6.8 out of 10 from roughly 15,000 votes, and on TMDB a 6.9 from 442 votes, indicating generally favourable but not enthusiastic viewer responses. A critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 135 reviews places it somewhat higher with reviewers than with audiences. De Clermont-Tonnerre went on to direct Lady Chatterley's Lover in 2022.