Rose Byrne is one of those rare performers who seems to have no weak spots, and the more you look at her career, the clearer that becomes.
She can move between drama and comedy with ease, as witnessed in movies such as “Bridesmaids” and “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You.”
I just saw “Tow” at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. “Tow” is based on the very real story of Amanda Ogle, an unhoused Seattle woman living in her aging Toyota Camry. The movie premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, and stars Byrne as the main character.
The story is based on Ogle’s real 2017 ordeal, when her car, containing all of her belongings, was stolen, recovered, and then towed. She spent over a year fighting the system to get it back. The car was not just her transportation, it was her home.
Byrne did a powerful performance in portraying Ogle’s battle against bureaucracy. She not only starred in it, she also produced the film, showing how personally invested she was in getting the story out there. The film was shot in just 19 days on a very small budget, which Byrne said added to its raw, realistic feel.
This movie really makes you think about how unfair the system can be. It was unnerving to watch the struggle to get the car back. Bureaucracy doesn’t bend for people who fall outside its assumptions of things like a home address, job, savings and ability to take time off to go to court.
Ogle had to deal with a maze of agencies that don’t talk to each other. They included the police, the towing company, municipal courts, city departments and storage facilities. She had to live in a woman’s shelter while doing so. At least there was that.
When the car was eventually recovered by police, instead of being returned to her, it was impounded. And because she was unhoused and had no stable address or resources, she couldn’t easily navigate the system to get it back. The towing company presented her with a bill of $21,634 for storage and fees over time, which of course, she could not pay. The system creates the problem, then makes it nearly impossible to fix.
This wasn’t a case of someone ignoring a ticket – it was a person trapped in a system that treated her car as property but ignored the fact that it was also her shelter.
Rose Byrne has said she was drawn to the project because Amanda’s story exposes how ordinary people can be crushed by systems that are supposedly neutral. And let’s also say that her appearance does not fit the typical stereotype, challenging our assumptions about “what homelessness looks like.”
The emotional undercurrent is the quiet realization that someone’s entire life can be uprooted because of a dramatic mistake. With a “there but for the grace of God go I” kind of feeling.
Homelessness has reached levels in the U.S. that are hard to ignore, and one of the most striking, and often invisible parts of the crisis is the rise in people living in their cars.
The festival is on until January 12th, 2026. For films and available tickets:
Girl Who Would be KING on Life, Style and INSPIRATION. 