Director Paige Bethmann gives us the gentle story of Ku Stephens, a young runner from the Pailute people in Nevada.

He loves to run, and consistently wins the cross country titles in his rural community. Inter-cut with Ku’s story is that of his grandfather Joseph Quinn, who was one of the stolen children taken forcibly to ‘Indian’ boarding schools. These are the ones where recently so many stories have emerged of the number of children who were abused and died, like the residential schools in Canada. As one person says – why does a school need a cemetery?

We follow Ku as he attracts the interest of a coach and tries to run the 2 mile track in nine minutes, which will see him have a chance of being chosen for the University of Oregon’s elite running program.

I called it a gentle story because it takes its time – we get a sense of the sparseness of the Nevada desert and there is genuine drama as we see Ku try and make his mark in the bigger running meets that will give him a chance of going to Oregon.

Where this documentary hits it stride is in the third act where Ku speaks more and talks of his need to be worthy of his name. He is a serious and introspective young man who carries the weight of cultural expectations from this family. He decides to stage a remembrance run in honour of his grandfather where he and his family will run the 50 miles that his grandfather did when he, more than once, escaped the school and ran home.

There are some beautiful moments where we see this understated young man coming into his own. There are a few moments where he smiles and it is worth the wait. I couldn’t help but see the correlations with the stolen children in Australia and how difficult it is to overcome that grief.