Blaze

• Del Kathryn Barton
• 101 min
• Australia
• 2022
• Fiction

Playful fantasy sequences pitted against brutal realism in this prize-winning artist Del Kathryn Barton’s striking debut about a family in crisis and a young girl’s path to adulthood.

The coming-of-age genre gets a revitalizing vitamin-kick in this daring Australian drama about twelve-year-old Blaze. She witnesses a terrible crime, and the shock turns her world upside down with waves of anger, grief, and depressions that she can only channel into her own fantasy world. Del Kathryn Barton lets us follow along in surprising, vibrant, creative sequences. Blaze’s single-father Luke is however left out and has to fight to find the right way to help his daughter through the crisis. Barton, whose art deals with inner worlds and female experience, makes their feature-film debut with a powerful, fine-tuned, and very impressive drama.

- Johan Blomqvist

• Uppväxt
• Familj
• Drama
• Debut
• Omskakande