Blaze is a shy pre-teen who lives alone with her father in Sydney. One day, on her way home, she sees a woman getting violently assaulted in an alleyway. Petrified, she goes home in shock, aware she is the only witness. She has trouble processing what she saw and decides to tell her father. To overcome this traumatising experience, Blaze finds refuge in her imagination, with her dragon Zephyr, her childhood friend… A harsh but galvanising initiation story, Blaze impresses in the way it ambitiously makes use of the fantasy genre. Through an astounding mix of coarse realism and life-affirming, oniric moments, Del Kathryn Barton offers her protagonist a structure for self-healing. She uses a wide range of cinematic devices to manifest the (brutal) end of childhood and immerse the audience in her heroine’s psyche. This first feature film is a striking sensory experience that sings the praises of imagination and the power of resilience. Del Kathryn Barton is an Australian painter that is well-known for her psychedelic art, and her fantastical representations of animals and human beings. She has won multiple awards, including one for a portrait of actor Hugo Weaving. In 2015, she produced the animated film The Nightingale and the Rose, an Oscar Wilde adaptation. Produced in the middle of the pandemic, Blaze is her fist directorial effort has booked selections at both Tribeca and Sydney.