It premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2017,[3][4] where it won the Art Cinema Award.

It grossed $4.2 million and was critically praised for its story, performances, and the depiction of the people and events that influenced the film.

Brady regularly visits his friend, Lane, who lives in a care facility after suffering brain damage from a similar accident.

The cast of the movie consists entirely of non-professional Lakota actors from the Pine Ridge Reservation playing fictionalized versions of themselves, including Jandreau's father, sister, wife, and several of his friends.

[7] Zhao was immediately drawn to Jandreau as an actor and decided to write a script for him: "I felt like he could be a movie star, like I had discovered a young Heath Ledger or something.

[8] Jandreau's injury and recovery affected the message Zhao wanted the film to convey: "I wished that Brady would see hope in his life after the rodeo, which inspired me to take his character in that direction.

[7] Zhao covered the film's production costs herself, using her and her boyfriend's (cinematographer Joshua James Richards) credit cards.

[7] Filming took place at local horse sales, rodeos, and auctions for free, incorporating "all these extras, who are perfectly costumed, all these old cowboys – you couldn't have cast and staged this.

"[7] The cast consists entirely of non-professional Lakota actors from the Pine Ridge Reservation playing fictionalized versions of themselves, including Jandreau, who grew up riding and training horses, as well as his father, sister, wife, and several of his friends.

[7] Sony Pictures Classics acquired the distribution rights to The Rider in North and Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Europe two days following its premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The Rider's hard-hitting drama is only made more effective through writer-director Chloé Zhao's use of untrained actors to tell the movie's fact-based tale.

[12] Godfrey Cheshire of RogerEbert.com gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, writing that its "style, its sense of light and landscape and mood, simultaneously give it the mesmerizing force of the most confident cinematic poetry.