Blaze

In artist Del Kathryn Barton’s dazzling feature debut, a young girl retreats into a fantasy world to cope with witnessing a horrifying act of violence.

Blaze (Julia Savage), a pre-teen Australian girl, is a dreamer, finding beauty in unassuming everyday objects and safe in her relationship with her supportive dad (Simon Baker). But when she witnesses a brutal sexual assault on her way home from school, Blaze retreats further into a world of fantasy (vividly rendered by Barton using her own artworks, stop-motion animation and puppetry), to both avoid and comprehend the violence she has witnessed. Never shying away from addressing the difficult and resonant subject of violence against women, but doing so in a truly creative way, Blaze is a moving acknowledgement of trauma that succeeds in being both a beautiful work of art and a powerful cry for justice.