Bretten Hannam’s road-trip quest is an essay in indigenous and queer identities set among the Mi’kmaw people of Nova Scotia: it’s a sometimes pious movie with rather ostentatiously beautiful imagery whose violent plot transitions in the opening act are a little forced. Yet there is an open-heartedness and gentleness in it, and a sense of style and place that reaches back to Malick and arguably even Mark Twain.

Link (Phillip Lewitski) and his younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony) live with their brutal and abusive white dad: mixed-race Link has dyed his hair blond, evidently in a confused attempt to deny his ancestry. He has always been told that his Native American mother is dead, but when he finds out that she may in fact still be alive – from a hidden, unopened birthday card – Link angrily torches his dad’s truck and runs away with Travis on a mission to find his mom at all costs.

The two boys are soon way out of their depth on the road and on the run: lucky for them they run into a good-natured Mi’kmaw boy called Pasmay (Joshua Odjick) with a car, who shows them how to survive and soon clearly has feelings for Link. Pasmay and Link’s romance is mediated by Travis’s kid-brother presence: they are in fact hardly ever alone together without Travis tagging imperturbably along and his sly, knowing yet fundamentally loving relationship with Link means that the love story in some ways involves all three of them.

Maybe there is a kind of saintliness in the film which is occasionally difficult to take, but it’s an accomplished, tremendously shot piece of work.

• Wildhood is released on 2 September in cinemas and on digital platforms in the UK, and is streaming on SBS on Demand in Australia.