Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck's God Bless the Child is a thing of rare beauty and creative courage.

Sensitively written and tenderly shot by Machoian, using only natural light, God Bless follows five siblings as they spend an idle summer's day simply being kids - all but Harper, that is. As the oldest of the five, she is left to play caretaker to her younger brothers when their mother takes off for the day without notice.

There is nothing more to the plot than that, but the magic is in the details and scene after scene reveals something new to marvel at, whether it's the unquestioning physical intimacy naturally shared by siblings; the delicate balance of power, glee and resentment in a play fight; the deep nostalgia of washing the most gentle and loving dog in the world; the seesaw of reckless abandon and sudden self-consciousness that comes with the innocence of being young; or the way sunlight plays on the face of a young boy as he lies in a field of reeds casually talking about death and heaven during a slow game of hide and seek. It is, by turns, deeply funny and quietly heartbreaking.

The ensemble of child actors is simply astonishing. Though it helps that they are all real-life siblings, and the filmmaker's children, this is not simply fly on the wall observation. Each scene is carefully scripted, rehearsed and performed and it shows in the richness and nuance of the results. Elias, in particular, is a firecracker as the irrepressible, overconfident clown of the family, subjecting his younger siblings to his every whim and hurling careless insults at strangers without a second thought, while Harper makes for a touching, unassumingly selfless adolescent.

This delicate and touching slice of life is so full of, well, life and weighted observations of what it's like to be young and simply exist in a world filled with so much joy and pleasure and heartbreak and melancholy that cannot yet be understood, but passes through our days nonetheless. There is something profound and essential in God Bless the Child's distillation of youth and instinctive humanness, and the painterly camera work it's presented with brings it mighty close to masterful.