✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United States, Canada · 2018
Rated PG · 1h 50m
Director Debra Granik
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Ben Foster, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey
Genre Drama
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A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.
Moving, perhaps inevitably, toward a final fork in the woods, Leave No Trace condenses big questions into something simple and quietly powerful: two people bonded by blood and shared history, discovering how their needs align and diverge.
Granik films with subtlety and quiet grace, but Leave No Trace explodes in the mind.
The Film Stage by Daniel Schindel
Leave No Trace’s acute sense of place and how people relate to it makes for great, emotion-laden naturalism.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The heart of Leave No Trace is the rapport between the father and daughter, and McKenzie and Foster are keyed to each other’s movements, perhaps even each other’s thoughts.
Leave No Trace sprouts into a modest but extraordinarily graceful film about what people need from each other, and the limits of what they can give of themselves.
Granik took a big risk here, making a purposefully small film that rejects familiar notions of dramatic conflict. But her approach works well enough that the most jarring note becomes Foster’s movie-star presence.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jon Frosch
The movie takes its time, but in its unassuming way, draws you close and keeps you there.
Leave No Trace is a universal, unforgettable experience.
There’s a listless, almost meandering nature to the story. The film’s conflict is clear — this is no way to raise a child, and allowed to continue in this fashion, Will risks both his life and Tom’s — and yet there’s no sense of where the script it headed, and no urgency to its resolution.
Screen International by Tim Grierson
It’s a film that never overwhelms but it lingers, leaving its mark on the viewer.
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