Colorado’s majestic Rocky Mountains provide the backdrop to this exquisite romantic drama about a lonely woman yearning to reconnect with an old flame.

Sixtysomething Faye (Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone, MIFF 2010) lives off the grid, having stripped her life to its basics. Widowed for seven years, she struggles with solitude and grief. Setting up her trailer at a lakeside Colorado campsite, she fishes for lobster, listens to birdsong, watches the stars and befriends a holidaying lesbian couple. But she’s waiting for someone to join her – Lito (Academy Award winner Wes Studi, Dances With Wolves), a childhood sweetheart she hasn’t seen in over 40 years.

Sharing thematic territory with Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Max Walker-Silverman’s stunning feature debut is a meditative, gentle exploration of love, loss and memory in the American west. Shot on gorgeous 16mm by cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo – who makes startling use of natural light and the sublime landscape – the film has all the nostalgic, melancholy textures of a faded Polaroid. But, above all, A Love Song is a wonderful vehicle for Dickey, a character actor who has appeared in countless supporting roles but here shines in a part that makes supreme use of her expressive talents, harnessing both tenderness and toughness into a career-defining performance.

“If a weathered heart still searching for tenderness in the twilight of life were a movie, it would be A Love Song … Exquisitely transcendent.” – The Wrap

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Please note: The Friday 19 August screening will be a Crybaby Session. Click here to find out more about Access at MIFF 70.