The Maiden Blu-ray presents a haunting, poetic debut from Canadian filmmaker Graham Foy, captured on richly textured 16mm film and steeped in adolescent longing, grief, and quiet cosmic mystery. Set over a single summer that fractures into tragedy, the film drifts between realism and the uncanny, evoking a liminal space where memory, nature, and the afterlife seem to overlap.
 
Best friends Colton and Kyle spend their days floating the river, dreaming aloud, and wandering a ravine that feels like a world apart. Nearby, Whitney explores the same landscape in solitude, filling her diary with drawings and thoughts as she searches for meaning after being abandoned by her closest friend. When Whitney suddenly disappears, the discovery of her diary pulls the story into a mirrored realm — a magical ravine where the boundaries between life and death begin to blur.
 
As the teenagers’ lives spiral through moments of beauty and loss, The Maiden Blu-ray unfolds as a quiet meditation on connection and absence, anchored by natural imagery and a dreamlike sense of time. Described by Manohla Dargis as “a haunting that feels like a generational cri de coeur,” the film marks a striking first feature from Foy, balancing emotional intimacy with a subtle paranormal pull that never fully explains itself — and doesn’t need to.
 
directed by: graham foy
starring: jackson sluiter, marcel t. jiménez, hayley ness
2022 / 117 min