Featuring a powerfully introverted performance from Ben Foster and introducing a rising new talent in Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace is another great character drama from Debra Granik, who continues to impress with her Midas touch on character, setting and performance.

Everyone has that dream to go off the grid, especially in these tech heavy times. It is a reality lived by traumatised military veteran Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), who call the vast urban parklands of Portland, Oregon, their home. Theirs is a life surviving on the barest of necessities and reliance upon one another. With no TV, no computer, and no smart device, they only have a small collection of old books and each other’s company to kill time. Their home is a shanty made for shelter, not for comfort. Their existence is idyllic to them, but not at all legal.

Director Debra Granik (who made an impact with 2010’s Winter’s Bone) brings a tangible, organic sense of place to this story of father and daughter removed from society. The northwest locales of Portland have been used as backdrop by a number of independent filmmakers (Kelly Reichardt in particular), and Granik successfully creates her own approach to the rich parklands and the small communities that reside within them.

When Will and Tom are eventually found by the law, their real journey begins as the pair are forced to try and integrate back into society. Here we see Foster at his finest, as the internal struggle of his Will is felt in every frame. Intensity is a calling card in Foster’s acting repertoire, and here he uses it to sublime, heartbreaking results, with Will a bundled-up ball of trauma, sadness and mistrust.

His one saving grace is the love for his daughter Tom, played by New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie who has made her big break here in a very major way. With most of Leave No Trace focused on Foster and McKenzie, it is the 18-year-old Kiwi who often holds the screen with her magnetic presence and her grounded, powerful portrayal of a young woman who wants to be a part of the world, as opposed to her father who is determined to shun society at all cost.

Granik has a fine eye for casting, with both Vera Farmiga and Jennifer Lawrence benefiting from the filmmakers Midas touch. McKenzie is sure to follow in the steps of those actors if performances like this are an indication of what’s to come.