One of the great discoveries coming out of Toronto Film Festival this year, this ambitious debut explores the complex ties between humans and nature, and illuminates the dark greedy ends of human nature itself. Like many of the best North American dramas, it puts one troubled person trying to do the right thing against a wall of economic interest.

Robin is a grader at a local cannery, working in a seemingly beautiful landscape and community that lives off farming peaches. When she discovers a peach with a strange beetle in it, everybody tells her not to care. But she won’t let go and her actions set a chain reaction in motion that jeopardizes the whole community. On top of that, she is confronted with big challenges in her personal life.

Small events, big consequences, and the shaky foundations of our lives – director Sophie Jarvis explores her theme further in Robin’s life, her changing body as well as the changing perception of her surroundings: colleagues and friends start to react increasingly hostile to her.

Exploring our fragile capitalist structures, Jarvis makes best use of the backdrop of rural British Columbia, Canada. Shot in 16mm, the imagery combines beauty and mystery with a kind of rot, a sense of loss, intertwining existentialist drama and feverish dream – in an amazingly distraught performance by main actress Grace Glowicki.

Christoph Gröner