The first images have been released of Sydney Sweeney who’s dazzling in her next film Americana, where she plays a small-town dreamer who’s inspiration is country music legend Dolly Parton. Hitting cinemas on 22 August 2025, the film, distributed by Lionsgate, has already received a lot of buzz from it’s premiere at SXSW.
“Dolly is definitely her biggest aspirational role model,” Sweeney told Entertainment Weekly. “Dolly is almost like a godlike figure to Penny Jo, and I really wanted to make sure that we had the aspirations of being Dolly, but then, she doesn’t have the resources.” “It’s trying to find that in-between place of who Penny is and what she has,” Sweeney continues. “But then also who she wants to be. Penny Jo dreams of being able to have Dolly’s outlook on life because her world feels so gray, dark, and trapped. [Dolly has] this beautiful big personality and energy that makes everything have color again, and that’s what she wants.”
Written and directed by Tony Tost, the movie traces the hubbub around a Lakota ghost shirt falling onto the black market in Penny Jo’s town. The artifact draws together the town’s outcasts and local ranch-hand Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser) and rebel Mandy Starr (Halsey) — into violent intrigue.
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